COMMENTARY BY HENRI DE LINTHAUT

ON THE "TREASURE OF TREASURES"

BY CHRISTOFLE DE GAMON


1610

(Part 3)

Here is the open path to reach this great secret, & temper it with nature
of which imperfect metal which one pleases, principally of that to which Mercury
vulgar can be equal to being prepared, cooked & fermented, & also to the qualities of
Sulfur of said metal, which must freeze it, because

The Mercury of the imperfect metals holds the middle between raw Mercury,
& the cooked, as the verjuice holds the middle, between the water & the wine.

The vulgar Mercury requires this proportion of us by heating it,
dry & ferment proportionately. And when it is so appropriate to the
Mercury of imperfect bodies, he is no longer vulgar, but Philosophical, and then he
it is necessary to prepare it: for there are certain bodies in which the Mercury of the
Philosophers is hidden, but the way to get it out is very difficult. Or do
being able to easily have this one, it is necessary to bring it up, so that it resembles it,
& stop it on the top of this proportion. But it is a maxim that

If the preparation of vulgar Mercury is not taught by an artist,
or divinely revealed, it is beyond human power to
to arrive at.

We therefore reserve this great secret under the key of silence, having done enough
warn you, with our Poet, not to mix raw Mercury with Gold, without having
prepared, lest you waste your time & your expense, & be
compelled by despair to belie this true art.

I therefore laugh at those whose proud hope
Think giving birth to this work, ignoring the material:
Because whoever does not enter at the end will not arrive,
And who does not know that he is leaving, does not know that he will find.
I laugh at those who leave next,
Want to reduce Gold to distant matter:
As if the animal, engendering, did not give
The sperm, his matter, thus powdered returned.
But I want Gold to be destroyed by them,
(If art can undo it, as well as build:
Since he suffers, untamed, coldness & ardor)
What remakes so great will remake its greatness?
I laugh at all those who seek the dyes
Gold & Silver, of strange natures,
In the eyes of many beasts, in herbs, in hair,
Are snakes, scorpions, worms, & egg shells,
Are, fools, think to perfect a work so divine,
Through blood, toads, droppings, or urine.
They want, blinded by the ugly darkness
Ink & charcoal, form a whiteness:
They amuse the World, & still abuse,
They dishonor art, and art dishonors them:
But they sow filth, they will reap it,
Because things, without more, give what they have.

a) The Poet gallantly mocks, & rightly laughs here at three kinds of
Philosophers, some working confusedly, others wanting to do more
which art neither can nor requires, the latter seeking strange things &
illegitimate, for the material of our work. We will start with the first
stupidest & most blameworthy band, since the fall of a scholar is heavier
than that of an ignoramus. Certainly confusion is dangerous in all states,
even where simplicity gropingly accompanies it. And is a great misery
that these wretched blowers neither want nor can consider the possibility
of Nature, which does not go from one extremity to the other, without passing through the middle.
Thus they show themselves the most ignorant of all. Because if we tell a
child a row of crowns, won't he start at one end, to come by
order until the end? Can a bird fly from tree to tree without beating
the vacuum of air which is in between? To think just the opposite would be
contradict his own senses. The fastest movement like the ball of the
cannon, & lightning, at its beginning, its middle, & its end. How
would they then do this great work, knowing only by the marriage of the husband
red & its white female, in order to procure, by mutual alteration, the
competition of the sperms of the two, giving birth to the azoth, or Green Lion, both
desired of the Sages? How could they with a sharp arrow reach
The White Eagle, and surprise the Red Lion in its warm lair? But how
will they freeze the Mercury properly, who do not know how to join it
legitimately with its agent, which serves it as rennet, like the goldfinch
with milk ? How, say I, will they freeze it, when they have not begun with the
solution of its ferment, base of fixation? Because

What freezes Mercury, fixes it, and tints it by the same means.

Thus, making this mistake, they only produce sophistications, the
less is sometimes sufficient to win his master Paradise by
escalation.

b) The latter think they are doing more than the eighth of the Sages of Greece, when they
hope to return their Gold in matter which Nature used in procreation
of the corporeal spirit of the World, or in the seed of the hermaphroditic Mercury,
which neither air, nor fire, nor Earth, nor Sulphur, nor Antimony nor
Marcasite nor anything could destroy. All things natural
can nothing in Gold, less in the matter that one draws from it. Because the more they
act here, the more noble & strong it becomes. How then will they undo this
node, where all these things so violent do not know how to do anything, so much this body
approach to simplicity? For the more one presses it to separation, or matter
divisible, to which these dreamers think him to retreat, the more he advances towards the
complete simplicity, to which he is nearest. Note therefore that Gold does not
can be divided into two different parts, but into two equal parts, so one will be
red, the other white, or volatile earth, and the other fixed. Not that the volatile part
either from his body (as the Mercury of the imperfect can be separated from his
Sulfur or salt) leaving its fixed part at the bottom: but one can take certain
quantity of Gold, & sublimate it, & reduce another quantity (under the
preservation of its fixity) into a transparent & clean body to fix again
the other volatile quantity. Because

Gold rises while sublimating, or remains at the bottom while
clarifying.

I do not deny that Gold should not be reduced to its first material, and that or by
manual way, as when one makes arsenical Sulphur, by sublimating, or by
the procedure of Nature & art, by dissolving it, & altering it by its menstruation, or by the Mercury of the Philosophers. Because the reduction is the first rule in the practice of the work, where the artist undoes in a short time all that Nature has
built up over many years, reducing his work to its raw material
metallic, namely in mercurial or sulphurous form, and not in matter
aquatic or powdery, by which, when it would be possible, everything would be
lost, because

It is only in the power of Nature to make the Mercury, in
taking water & earth.

c) The third squadron seems to be the envy of the other two troops. Because
misunderstanding the meaning of the Philosophers, they produce only things
monstrous. They try to satisfy their disordered appetite for avarice, by
meats descended from the Doctor Philosophers, or stupefied with a supine
ignorance, choose for the base of their buildings ruinous and strange fabrics,
& look for them in herbs, in eggshells, in blood & other filth that the Poet reproaches them. But when they had sweated well, they did nothing, &
remain in their error, deceived by what the Philosophers say, Matter
of the Stone is in everything, as we said above. Else
apart there are some who are not stupid, but very wicked, who use things
disproportionate, to deceive good people, and of these things try to
draw quicksilver, oils & waters, which they call the four Elements.
Item Armoniac Salt, Arsenic Sulfur & Orpiment, which they would rather have made of
buy them all made by Nature's hand. They are also looking for dyes
in vegetal & sensible things full of combustibility & earthiness, thus, almost at all exempt from humidity: & leaving Gold & Silver, whose seed could bring to them by legitimate labor & the aid of Nature, endless fruit . Indeed in them is what we seek, & not in anything else of the World, for the rest full of stench & imperfection, cannot endure the examination of fire. There are besides these three kinds of Alchemists, others wiser,
taking for their subject the four capital spirits, like vulgar Sulphur,
Arsenic, Orpiment, & Armoniac salt, & think to produce a good
dyeing. But they cannot, as appears from this definitive axiom,
To dye is nothing but to reduce the complexion to its nature, and to remain with it,
without transformation, teaching the nature of fighting fire. Because the nature of the dye matches that of the complexion .

In fact, if you dye with Gold or Silver Tin, lead or other
similar, the agreement is with the natures, because all have taken their origin from the
Mercury. The ripe is here joined with the unripe, so that the unripe becomes
perfect by the ripe. But these four aforesaid spirits, being different in kind
of with the metals, I ask if they should dye, if they will be converted, or
if they will convert. If they are to be converted, they are not tincture, as
it appears by the above definition, If they must convert, they will convert the
thing dyed in their nature, which is earthly and foreign to metals. It is
why they cannot, by dyeing, make a metal. And that by dyeing, they
convert the complexion into their nature is proved by this axiom,

Everything that begets produces its like.

For this reason being the tincture of these four generative spirits, the Earth
will engender a thing similar to itself, and earthly. Yet run away from all these
things which do not accord with Nature, such as steaming hair, brains,
saliva, women's milk, blood, urine, droppings, embryo, menses,
semen, bones of the dead, fish, birds, worms, toads, & basilisks
natural & artificial, where lies a great fable. Do not look also for the juices of
plants, and even the two Simples, name one Lunar, the other Solar.
Beware of taking anything that the Philosophers used
comparison, as when they say, Take white Arsenic,
Vivid Sulphur, Theriac, Fixed Moon, &c. because they mean something else by
those bits there. Those who do the opposite will deceive themselves, because in
deceiving others, wanting by a bad thing to do a good thing, &
by a defective thing to supply the defect of Nature. So believe our
Poet, that he who sows filth will not reap wheat: flee
as the good Trévisan advises, all salts, alums, rosacea, Attraments,
vitriols, borax, magnet stone, & other precious mineral stones, & talc, & gypsum. Leave all metals alone: ​​for though by them be the entrance, you would make nothing of them, & less the mineral means. For although metals can be made of them, they will only be so in appearance. It is therefore folly to seek in one
thing which it does not have in itself. However, I want to seal that we find at
center of the Earth a virgin land, which purged by the water & the Leu of its
original sin, as the learned Penot says, is the subject of all marvels. Because
from it, by means of the Mercury of the great World, art can draw all that
Nature engenders in the bowels of the Earth, whether perfect or imperfect metals, &
seven kinds of salts, as many Mercurys, & as many Sulphurs, with gum
Azotic of Raymond Lully, his Lunar, Polar, Sky, Tartar, Sel Armoniac, &c.

But (a) let us continue our work, & let them follow their ways:
They finally find themselves, orphaned by their joys,
And although they cry out to them, O poor obstinate ones,
They aggravate their disease, being medicated!
How then, in order not to err, does the Sage operate?
Of (b) Sulfur & Mercury he makes a marriage,
Who by (c) fair weight, under moderate,
Generate in the clear vessel, (d) the desired Elixir.
For it is by such a nickname that the Arab calls him,
To conceal, prudently, such a beautiful powder,
That we also call Pierre (e), because fixedly,
Its firmness subsists in a vehement fire.

a) Madness has so frozen & fixed the viscous & lunatic mood of
brain of our Alchemists, whom I believe that neither Heaven nor the Mercury of
Even philosophers, could not solve in its first matter this stone
which goes rolling in the sophisticated heads of these obstinate people. But when we
would have softened it, I make sure that all the Hellebore from Auvergne, Languedoc, nor
convoluted & rendered specific purgative Pyrenees could by purging,
dump that sticky mood. And when we would have brought them back to their senses, by
help of the great Elixir, they would still attack their Physician, angry that he
take away this pleasure, where they bathe, promising each other a thousand felicities and
wealth, breathing only Baronies, Counties, even Kingdoms, &
Finally, unlimited power. But they only take heed, building their
imaginary palaces, it happens to them most often as to this Tharsis, who
poor Fisherman, believing to become a great Lord, and singing of his future fortune,
fell into the Sea, which he wanted to abandon out of contempt, and of which our Poet
even sings fate pleasantly in his first works, where having made it
speak, he concludes with these words,

So sang Tharsis, having nothing so dear,
Than to increase, dazzled, his fame and his happiness
But he saw himself deceived: The unfortunate slope
Of the rock that carried him, was under him too slippery,
For poor Tharsis, wanting to go,
Felt from the highest to the abyss flowing:
He clasps his hands, his fingernail and his arms are failing him.
He chet, the sea in noise, during the waves which yawn.
He yawns to fish, and he who before
Flocks of Neptune, strapping, went alive,
Seeing himself as the bait of Neptune's herds,
Many loud cries importunate Portune
Creepy frolics: The silver squadron
Of the Nymphs of Thetis, the river AEté:
Durymedusa & Thee, & attractive Janire,
Accoutrent of speed, to the drowning rock:
But knowing Tharsis, instead of assisting her,
To the waves & to the fish let him be carried away!
And then the unfortunate, by this cruel death,
(Like Icarus of old) made the Immortal Sea.

The same was true of our poor Alchemists, who, building their fortunes on
ruinous foundations, find themselves finally precipitated from the summit of their pretensions
in the abyss of despair. But back to our subject.

b) We said above that it is that Mercury, & Sulfur of the Philosophers, at
to know two homogeneous substances & of the same nature, which are Mercury
animated, & Gold, which only differ in that one is masculine frozen & fixed by Nature, & the other feminine, volatile, & animated by art, which, assembled according to the intention of the Philosophers, & governed by a due proportion of the fire, engender a body more perfect than that from which they drew their origin. Gold
to achieve this perfection, the Philosopher strips the King of his ornaments
Royals, leads him to the edge of the fountain, & there chops him into fine pieces, & throws him into the said fountain, his friend, to be regenerated into a more beautiful body,
& change his barren old age to a fertile youth, by which he acquires the
means of dressing in clothes ten times more beautiful than before, by the dowry that
brings him the fountain his lover, who had made love to him for so long. Of
fact it is the nature of the female to attract the male to her love affairs, and not that of the
male to attract the female. For Nature, never idle, acts in them,
moving to the generation of their kind, in order to multiply & perpetuate. SO
this marriage of Sulfur & Mercury is called of the Philosophers, Rebis, ferment,
(however manual,) because the said Sulfur or Gold is the true Leaven of the Elixir,
now a true marriage of male and female, which gives hope to their
wise Guardian to see in his time of lineage, which is the Stone they disguise
thus, to deceive the ignorant, who only look outside of their writings.
c) Anyone who wants to duly practice this art, & make a multiplication, fixation, or
mining, must know on the finger the weight of each thing. In this they are mistaken
most non-alchemists. 'Cause if they put too much of the volatile thing in the
fixed, the volatile homeland wins the best fixed part. On the contrary if the fixed is
stronger than the volatile, it retains the best volatile part with itself. For this
it is necessary to moderate a weight according to the virtue of the fabrics & in this necessarily
follow nature. But how will we do it: Who is among the travelers
of the Plutonic kingdoms, who ever found any balance in the shops of
Natures. We are still awaiting the report, and yet the weight is
necessary. Note then, that the weight, as Count Trevisan says, is only required
where there is only one thing, because it is only a question of the weight in virtue. But where
there are two, they must be weighed, to proportion them according to the quantity required.
Thus the weight of the Philosophers is given in regard to the Sulfur which is in the Mercury,
and in this consists the whole secret, of which notice this maxim, that

The fire which does not dominate Mercury is that which digests the
matter.

Imagine then how much more subtle fire is than water, air or earth, &
how many it takes to be able to defeat the others. Thus the weight is in the
first elemental composition of Mercury, & is nothing else, as said
the aforesaid Trevisan. If you are a Philosopher, you will judge that Nature must
weight: for it cannot err, and takes no more than it needs, given what
is the just & wise dispensary of the treasures of the Eternal. You must therefore
first make the conjunction or composition, then alternating, &
mixing, the union will be made, where you will not have to put on weight. For this if you
want to be a true artist & good disciple of Nature, you must imitate her in all
facts, proportioning your weight to his: otherwise you can
repent, as the Code of any withdrawal says on this subject, If you mix without
weight, there will come delay by which you will be discouraged .
Abugazab master of Plato, left in writing in very few words, but
truly golden, the whole secret of the weight of the Philosophers, saying, The power
earthly on its resistant, according to deferred resistance, is the action of
agent in this matter . These words are the true foundation of weight,
which the good Trevisan epilogued, and did not want to explain them, so as not to
break his vow made to God, to reason & to the Sages, as we do
also not to incur their just indignation.

d) Elixir is an Arabic word, as our Poet says very well, who takes it here for
the perfect Stone in its whiteness or redness. Because
The Stone of the Philosophers is nothing other than the very perfect
tinting of Gold & Silver .

Geber gives us three orders of it, the first of which is a white sulphur, however
not exactly fixed, for this does it stop Mercury only in the same way. The second
is a white Sulfur fixing the Mercury perfectly. The third one White Sulfur &
red, which can be multiplied by virtue & quantity, & projects onto the
imperfect metals. Isaac Hollandais is a little different in these three strong
medicine or Elixir. Because by the first it fixes perfectly, by the second it fixes
& makes projection on the mondified metals, & by the third makes projection
indifferently on impure metals, without preparing them in any way. But in
here is the real definition to clearly distinguish all that is required for this
glance.

Elixir and nothing else that the body resolves into Mercurial water.

And as Trévisan says in his responsive letter, Elixir is said of E, which lignifies ex,
& Lixis which means Aqua, because of this water, namely Mercurial, all
things are done. He gives a good example of this when he says , In medicine
we add the simple water of the fountain in the first decoction by
elixification with the flesh of a chicken, & by the first degree of the
decoction appears juice, & a good & perfect decoction, being indeed dissolved in water the watery & airy parts of the flesh of the said chicken, although earth & fire are also in effect there. But in order that the said medicine may become a more perfect restaurant, the cooked flesh is ground , & the juice is added to it, with a stronger fire dares to distill the whole: so that it is only one thing, where the subtle of earth & fire
mixed with the watery & airy parts of the chicken, all of which
virtue is in this liquor . The same is done in our Elixir, yes the spirit
raw mineral, like water, is joined with its body, which is our Sulphur, the
dissolving in the first decoction, & first degree of fire. So these two
things is composed of the Elixir, namely of dyed water, which must be noted for
hear the Poet well.

e) We said above that the Stone is nothing but the most perfect
tincture of Gold & Silver, but it should be noted that there are three kinds of Stone,
mineral, vegetal, & animal, so chicane is double, namely white &
red. But the great Rosary says that the Stone says everything, because it
has of itself & in itself everything serving to its perfection. And Vincent says in his mirror
natural, Our Elixir is called Pierre & not Pierre: Pierre because it
can be crushed, & not Stone, because it melts , & as our
Poet, because he remains fixed in the fire. In the end he is at (fi says Pierre, because
that the Philosopher build there all his happiness, after God, in this life.

But should I be dazzled by a vain appearance,
To prefer, widower of pity, my envious silence,
For the sole respect of those whose fear has hidden
Of this divine work the secret sought?
Certainly, my frank humor the true cannot deny:
For the God whose love so much inspires me,
Does not teach the knowledge by which the Worker is made
From a false alchemist, a perfect lachrymid.
When therefore the Artist has put matter in its place,
Until the time expires his hand does not move it:
She's like the child, that shouldn't be taken away
From the womb, until the term stopped.
For the air cooling its natural heat,
Would destroy the virtue of his new soul.
The soul is only heat, and matter afterwards,
Could never be perfected by any fire.
So here is revealed this so sealed mystery,
That the child is enclosed in the Moon his mother:
For what can our eye see under the course of the Sun,
When is better than the glass to the Moon the same:
Clearly fading colored glass,
The palely illuminating Moon:
He receives near the fire the colors of the vapours,
She also receives them from the heat-bearing God.

The Poet discovers a great secret here, namely that since the Hymen of the
Sulfur & Mercury is made, the Philosopher who was the Paranymse does not visit
plus the bridal chamber, until the marriage is accomplished, & the child
designed & born. He compares this Embryo acting with that of the animal
reasonable, which neither can nor should be visited, until of itself it
opens the womb & desires the light: Comparison which the true Philosopher must
peel well. Saturn therefore operates first in the union of the two menses,
by freezing & extinguishing, in the first month, by its coldness & dryness, the matter in a mass. The second month Jupiter operates by its benign heat, digesting
said congealed in some fleshy mass, which then is called Embryo,
beginning to show signs of its kind, yet common to all
animals. The third month Mars acts in matter by a heat & dryness
raised & stronger, by which it divides it, & arranges the members. THE
fourth the Sun, as Lord of this generation, infuses the spirit, & when
it begins to move & live. The fifth month Mercury takes its
place in this work, making the holes & breathing. The sixth Venus disposes the
eyebrows, eyes, pugnacious parts & the like. The seventh comes
the Moon, & with its humidity & frigidity works to bring out the child, & if he is born at this time he lives with difficulty, & not being born, becomes debilitated. Of which Saturn
takes over the government in the eighth month, constraining the acceptance of the child
by its coldness & dryness, & if it were born then could not live. In the ninth month the good-natured Jupiter returns to work, & by his vivifying heat recreates the weak forces of the child, by nourishing it, & then being strengthened, the child changes his dark room to this large & luminous Dirty Room of the Universe. . The same considerations must be had in the generation of our Peter. Noting in
besides that the water retains three months during our matter in the womb, which and
our ship. So much time keeps it & foments our fire, which succeeds in
same operation hot air by three months. However our child cannot go out
from the belly of his ship lest the winds of said air be discussed by fire
Solar, but afterwards he comes out, opens his mouth, and wants to be breastfed, that is to say
let it be redone & incère. By this you are instructed to equalize the dose under with
own matter, put it in the vessel where it must be enclosed, without
shoot, until the end of the work. It is only necessary to use the required degrees &
proportioned to the temperature of Nature, which alone will produce for us what we
desire. On the contrary, if we fail in these things, it will produce for us a false
germ, or some other novelty. All the mystery of the work is thus made by
a single way & practical without lifting the material from its vessel, nor cooling it
no way. Because

Gold, solve once in spirit, if it feels cold, get lost with everything
the work .

So if the matter frozen after dissolution, & dried, cooled,
it would harden & restrict its pores so much, that it would quench &
would dissipate his spirits, without ever being able to restore them, because the sweetness of the
fire required for its decoction, could not penetrate to the depths of the mass
too compact, nor to heat it also, without fortifying the fire, which doing so, one
would burn it, or would it be forced to go away: For the air would be to vanish its
mind, without being able to recall it, as it happens at the bottom of rivers, which
carried away by grains in the form of sand, by the impetuosity of passing torrents
by mining, & breaking the natural vessels, before its perfect decoction,
cannot afterwards by any artificial fire, be perfect, as it would have been by the care
of Nature, if he had remained in his vessel, and on the continuous heat
that she administered to him, as we have shown above in the generation
metals. This is what our Poet means, touching the comparison of
the child with our divine work.

Shall I say that the fire, father to this great Stone,
Seems to the fire which circumvents & fertilizes the Earth?
For like the great King of the clear torches of Heaven
Let the vapor rise to the spacious Void,
And making on the Earth a celestial circle,
Fertilize from Heaven all the earthly World:
Thus the stinging fire of the wise operator
Pushes on its matter a slow vapor,
For, always circumventing growing matter,
Form the work more beautiful than Nature begets.
When after the bitter Winter, the sovereign Flambeau
Bring back to Earth a young Revival,
Its fertile heat, sweet beginning art,
By moving the germ, the roots grow,
The roots after feeling that sweet warm,
Happy to give birth, draw their sap above,
This sap grows from ocious branches
Who then clothe their arms in graceful greenness,
Then the heat little by little, reinforcing its virtues,
Hardens the new hair of the covered trees,
The trees suffer then a stronger heat,
And the strong heat the maturity bears.
But if when the sad Winter has mowed the greenness,
The Sun, suddenly, reignited its ardor,
Burning the bare trees & dried with cold,
He would come, not to produce, but to destroy Nature:
So to procreate this excellent work,
When the fire starts, it must be slower,
Then rising by degrees, must Nature follow,
Who suddenly can kill, but suddenly does not give life,
Since rather than being born, death always tends
The work where haste is admitted to help.
For this benign milk light meat
Is tender children the first pasture,
Then when this liquid food made their bones stronger,
Stronger meat sustains their bodies.
Like a dead body cooks, when a Damon walks in,
For lack of heat, what he puts in his belly,
So the moving spirit whose help operates here,
Without this natural heat, do not digest it too.

The Poet here names fire, Father of Stone, and is natural fire. Then he treats
of exterior fire, and of its government, of which he gives three examples taken from
Sun in the permute season of the year, of the stomach, & of a young child,
concluding however that if the natural fire is not in the matter, or is extinguished by
the ignorance or negligence of the artist, that the exterior can no longer do anything about it,
of which he brings the comparison of a foreign spirit in a dead body. As to
remains, it is quite clear, however I will say in passing that it is necessary that your fire
kindle the fire in the ship, & keep it from going out, as Ripley wills,
when he says in his twelve gates what are you having fun at
around your fire, make your fire in your, vessel . So we
have double fire, the natural Sulphur, or of Nature, & the instrumental fire,
helping each other. So that fire is all the art that Nature uses. THE
Trévisan says that he put his ship in the bath & in the dregs, but for nothing, & on the coal fire which was even worse: because its matter sublimated. Note here that
the heat of the mines is nil, or as if insensible, because if it were there, its
work would be done suddenly. So we need a wrestling engine to hasten the
work, & no matter whether it is a lamp, dung or coal fire, being
applied according to the proportion of matter changing from nature to nature, &
depending on whether the inner motor of the vessel urges itself to action. It's necessary
therefore, as the Trévisan says, fire digesting, continual, non-violent, subtle,
surrounding, airy, enclosed, incombustible, & altering, & In my true God , (he said ) I told you aunt the manner of fire . Now that it is not necessary to precipitate it, hear this
what does the great Rosary say, Keep from wanting to perfect your solution before
the time required, because this haste is a sign of deprivation of conjunction . AT
this remark also says Mary prophetess, The strong fire keeps from making the
conjunction . And note this secret, that Mercury is all our fire, as fire
of ashes, of bath, and of bare coal, and that according to whether he is alive, or mortified,
whitened or reddened, change you must follow, proportioning your fire
exterior to the heat of the bath, the ashes of the sand, and the naked fire. If you are
now good artist & philosopher, you will hear what your fire must be.
Look at what the light of Aristotle says about it, Mercury must
cook in a triple vessel, to evaporate & convert the activity of the
dryness of the fire, in the vaporous humidity of the air circulating the
material . And the Trevisan in his allegorical practice puts a wall around a
oak hollow, in which is the fountain where the King bathes. So here is a
triple vessel. And Geber said, Fire does not digest our matter, but its
good altering heat, which is deemed dry by the air which is the
medium region, where the fire has to move and dampen itself . Finally it is the
fire, which can make or destroy our work, as Aros & Calib say, the
Mercury & fire suffice, in the middle & at the end, but not at the beginning where it is a question of a little heat of fire, & the Rebis.

(a) This is the secret of Jupiter, which gives A gentle
embrace to his sweet Latona. They are inside an island & the island
it is the ship, Juno comes there from Heaven, it is from the hollow capital,
From which flows at the bottom many airy moods, And finds, in
descending, this sacred Nymph, Of whom Diana & Phoebus in
Delos goes nascent, Who are the white Treasure, the other blushing.
Like the high Sun, when at the Sheep it rises Surpasses the
coldness which Saturn overcomes, The inferior Sun which this works
accomplishes, From the matter to the furnace the coldness abolishes.
It is here (b) that the proof to the artist declares
This ancient secret of Daedalus & Icarus,
Who father & son enclosed, their form disguising,
In the narrow labyrinth of the shining ship,
Have viscous heaps of subtle matters,
Over their waxed flanks set movable feathers,
And with undulating flight, among the walled-in air,
Ore high, ore low, split the glassy Sky.

a) The Poet having amply taught above the government of fire
outside, returns to the marriage of Sulfur & Mercury, & describes the coitus of
Jupiter & Latona, which is the conjunction of the two precious Gemini, Phoebus
& Diana, who were born on the island of Delos. By Latona therefore he means Sulfur
impure & altered, or the bottom of the Stone, by Jupiter the animated Mercurial water, or the
top of the said Stone, or the more subtle Sulphur, & by Juno the body of Mercury
air which descending from the Sky or screed of the vessel, will find the said Sulfur
impure, namely Latona, who pregnant with the subtle Sulfur or spiritual Gold,
gives birth to the white & red Elixir. For then coldness (compared to Saturn) is
surmounted by the gentle warmth of Jupiter, or the lower Sun. So the top
is made as what is below, and the bottom as what is above, according to
the axiom of our great Hermes, that is to say that Gold which is fixed and earthly,
by its gravity always falls low, seeking its Element, because it is
alone among the metals which falls to the bottom of Mercury, & all the others swim
above, & Mercury, because it is volatile, seeks the top, which is the air:
but sensing Gold, dissolves it into its form of flowing Mercury, as it does
light spirit & masculine sperm, airy, & ready to ascend to its supreme & ethereal region. So the bottom has risen to the top, & now our Mercury (or Jupiter) must descend low, so that the high & volatile will be like what was below , which is Gold. For the body has become spirit, and now the spirit must become body.

b) Daedalus means in the practice of our work, the variable Sulphur, because it
changes it from one color & nature to another, for Daedalus signifies, various things.
This Sulfur is the father of the other subtle & fusible, or spiritual Gold in our
double mercury, which is this Icarus son of Daedalus. Through the Labyrinth the Poets
hear our egg or vessel, or rather the vile stone, showing itself under the
hideous mask of darkness. As for the wings from which they strive to fly,
are the things that serve for sublimation. So under this fable they hide the
true distillation of the Philosophers. Because drops rise to the top of the ship
by sublimation, which feeling the reverberating heat of the Artist, do not
may stop, but fall again into the rest of the remaining water below,
& thus melting its wings falls into the Sea, or viscous heap of which our
Poet. The ignorant have not heard this fable, nor this distillation, of which
Morien said in Peat, After sublimation add immediately the
distillation .

a) My God the great pleasure, when the Worker sees the birth of
signs that make his work known to him! Sometimes (b) he sees the
black corrupted with poison, Then the gray which from black shows the
healing :

Then various colors, which finding no way out,
Seem to the motley of a bare liquid
Curving in an arc, when Phoebus darts in the hollow
Of the damp clouds, its warm rays.
Ore (c) he sees bursting out a perfect whiteness,
Showing that its matter is entirely net:
Sometimes (d) a redness, which dries up, makes it appear
The greatest purity that the world can see.
But as a child may live to the seventh month,
As well as those produced by the ninth:
For the planets have poured their rays upon him,
And made, by purging him, all his limbs perfect:
But the child cannot, whatever the women say,
When their dirty thefts from people they make up for,
Living in the eighth month, where harming Saturn
New moods in it go chatting.
Thus this matter, in its naive whiteness,
As well as in the red is entirely vivid:
But when she begins to lose her whiteness,
Until the perfect red it loses its vigour.
Not that of its inner strength water
That we would not restore, in this change die,
But being for white ready in perfection,
The more continuous fire loses this action to him.

a) The Stone passing from one extremity to the other, so that it does not receive short
the colors of the World, as the wandering band of Alchemists think, is
susceptible to all averages in general, say averages for this salt
respect. First appears the black, then the gray, then the susceptible white
in power, no indeed, of all colors, then the tanned one, to which succeeds
the reddish, then the red, & finally the other red which surmounts the Rubies in all
beauty. In this place, it should be noted that when the material begins to take
its whiteness, there appears a plumage of all colors in the belly of the matrass
of the color of the Iris, which is generated from the rays of the Sun retained &
reverberated in the concavity of the humid cloud, as our Poet remarks.
Because the material still having a little moisture, which the quarter degree of the fire raises
in the concave of the white & diaphanous matrass, renders a gleaming color, which
bends in the hollow of the vessel, for what it cannot get out, & through the
rays of the outer fire, receives various colors. What made the
Philosophers that we see in our Stone all the colors of the World.

b) There are three main colors which must be shown in the work: black,
white, red. Blackness, the first color, is named after the ancient Dragons
poisonous, when they say, The Dragon will devour its own tail . THE
others call it the serpent impregnating itself. The others, the head or the beak
of the Raven, the blackness of the Sea, black blacker than black, & Black Eagle.
Geber & Danthyn say of this color, Rejoice, because under
this blackness the whiteness is hidden . Certainly if the work still remains
white & appears no blackness, the la operator must abort, as the
Crows abandon the Corbillats in the nest, until their down which
remains white for seven or eight days, changes to black plumage, like
that of their father & mother, who then recognize them, take them for theirs, & feed them. Thus our Stone before its dissolution, & some time after, is white, which makes it difficult to judge whether the required dissolution has been completed,
until she has donned black. What the operator must recognize
his work as legitimate, and nourish it to its perfection. This darkness is
also called the Terrestrial Element, & a deadly venom, & this in the first place because
from the putrefaction it has engendered, for any corruption of matter, of
whatever quality makes it mortal. Second, to declare
the action of the Dragons & the Lions who killed each other, & finally, because
matters which were fragmented and useless, if Nature had not animated them, for
visibly give birth to them. What we could not achieve without the darkness in the
womb of his mother, until the time of childbirth, which becomes the seventh
month, is perfect in white, & can live, like the child born in the said month,
as our Poet aptly alleges.

c) Whiteness is the end of sublimation, & the true fixation of the Philosophers,
yet said, fixed moon, quicklime, mining, white sulphur, queen of metals,
mother of pearls, white elixir, white whiter than white, white lion, eagle
white, virginal milk. Finally they gave him all the names of what bears a
extreme whiteness.

d) Redness is the last color & the end of the first work of the Philosopher,
& is said, Stone, mining, Sulfur & Red Lion, the King of metals, father of
Ruby, Elixir & red work, red redder than red, human blood,
finally bearing all road names red thing, glorified body, which lives from century to
century until the consumption of the World. Immortal king, & as Hermes says,
It is the strong force of all force, overcoming all things. including all his enemies,
imperfect metals, are forced to make peace with him. So that the
Philosopher seeing this beautiful & celestial redness has reason to rejoice, & make
thanks to the eternal Sun by the grace & light of which this beautiful Phoebus
made his servant, & by his rays gave him the glory of the World
universal, & the clarity that chases away the shadows of all obscurity & falsehood.

(a) So when cooking is at all complete, In its high
redness the stone is high:
Like our blood, which when well cooked,
By heat of the liver, redness is reduced.

(b) Now she is this Vulture, which on the right side Of a mountain
greatly aloud, sing in a high voice, I am black, & sometimes
I go all gray appearing, Sometimes white as snow, and sometimes
blushing. So there you go, abuse it, as you need to hear

That the four Elements come here to render:
For Earth is black, fire the other color,
The wave is pure whiteness, and the air is redness.
It is therefore, it is therefore then that quivering with joy,
The worker goes praising God, who this good sends to him.
It is (c) then who he saw which shows in fact
That fire must one day purge the foul World.
That's when he saw what the old hides
Under the watchful Pastor of Inache's daughter:
For as the eyes of Argus the Pans are variegated,
This material abounds in colorful signs.
It was then who he saw that on cool Earth,
Pyrrha & Deucalion go kicking many a stone:
The women that Pyrrhus makes is fixed Quicksilver.
The men that the other makes is the Sulfur annexed,
Anyway, that's when he saw this harsh Gorgon,
Changing those she glances at, into stony nature:
Lie that shows the non-lying effect
Of this divine Treasure, that in Pierre or sees change.

a) The Poet does not compare without cause this last decoction showing itself under the
vermilion color, with the redness of blood duly cooked by the transmuting heat
liver. For as the blood thus altered, nourishing the limbs, is changed into
their substance, this redness taken by the mouth, perhaps transmuted & serve
of restorative & unique medicine. This is why the Philosophers call this
redness of human blood, & red Lion, so that some call Gold thus,
before its alteration, as being this Lion, blood, ferment, & tincture in power,
& elaborated by art, is such indeed: being in other words, Or Astral, or Electra of the
Philosophers.

b) There have always been Alchemists so ignorant, that having brought the work
to the perfection of an absolute blush, they left him thinking that he was not worth
nothing, because it did not flow, and had not interfered when they wanted to throw it on the
Mercury or on the imperfect metals. From which they concluded the art to be either false, or
impossible. Certainly they had some reason, for they had only one land
red, which had lost its moisture, as Geber says , The spirits which have
lost their moisture by sublimation & fixing can't do anything
good, while they are earthy, or as dry . And such is our redness,
which astonishes the ignorant, not knowing that it must restore its lost moisture,
suckling this young lion cub with his mother's own milk: & never leaving the work
where it needs to start again. In fact, this Vulture cries to them from the high coast which is
this high color, that they do not forsake him so that he does not forsake them: &
that it is black, gray, white, red, meaning that it is necessary to redo the work, by a
same procedure, by which all these signs & colors appear again
that ignorance took for particular works, to build some after this great
& universal works. What is against Nature & experience as have
shown the Trevisan, Isaac & all the other true Philosophers, among others Geber
who says that the work is done in a single furnace, and in a single vessel, where it is
dissolves, putrefies, freezes, conjoins, sublimes, fixes, & incises itself,
making it fusible like wax. It separates itself, making us see under a
same regime of fire, & without moving it, what are called the four Elements.
For first we saw Water & Earth, which are Gold & Mercury, which had in their occult Fire & Air. But these were susceptible only to the intellect. After no, we saw with our eyes the white, which is said to be air,
originated from water or Mercury, & now red, which is like procreated fire
by the action of the conquering Sulphur. This is why the ancients named these
colors the four Elements, although indeed there are only two: namely
Water & Earth, from which is born by the third, which is the Sulfur mediator, this
glorious ternary, first & next matter of all composite things,
which, both in their composition and resolution, show these four colors
like their children, whom our poor Aristotelians took for the fathers
same, namely for the agent & the patient, or the Water & the Earth. In fact, these two are the only & first matter recited by the legislator of the Abrahamide race, & confirmed by Hermes Trismegistus, & finally by the descendants of the true Philosophers: to whom agrees the invincible experience of the true Alchemists, who experience all the days that from two through the third all things originate. This is what is seen in the composition of the simple Mercury of the Philosophers, in that of the Azoth, in the inceration, in the fermentation of the work,
& finally at the beginning & completion of this, without seeing nor having to do the fourth, as our quadrators of the circle want, which leave
falsely crowning their circle with this square laurel, I had recourse to our Poet.

c) The Poet makes a fine comparison here, showing that as the World has been
once purged by water & will be so in the end by fire: that also the water to
first washed the exterior feces of the work, & the fire at the end, alone,
cleansed & consumed all the inner filth & faeces of the Stone. It is
why the Philosophers say that azoth & fire purge & wash Latona,
which we said was that impure land that Jupiter is going to find in Delos.
In this consists the whole secret of our science, namely, that it is necessary that all
things die & be regenerated by water & fire, & only after them
become a spiritual body, called quintessence, or Magnesia: like us
teaches the divine dialogue of the son of God with Nicodemus. Finally this redness
born in power after Mercury cuts off Argus's head & the colors
vanished, which we call the tail of the Peacock. It is also like
says our Poet, this way of generating males and females, by comparing
Pyrrha & Deucalion, which enhances the projection of the work blanc &
red: work, which afterwards, increased in virtue, is our Gorgon converting the
imperfect metals, (which are our men of the kinship of the Stone) into true
Stones: What is done by adaptation, as Hermès says, in its table
of emerald, & thus they participate in the glory of their King, as the practice says
allegorical of the good Trevisan.

Gold (a) so that into the metals its matter may have entered,
Of Moon or Sun he makes her incere:
And (b) by its white powder then it goes changing,
Throwing a weight on ten, the silver imperfect:
Or throwing on a hundred weights an extreme weight of red,
His silver comes a gold, which on the other is supreme,
Thus the test shows that the imperfect metal
Holds an Essence Brimstone, another accidental.
This one that stinks, is only locked in the pore,
Without spoiling the metals, from them evaporates:
But this one remains, and if he did not remain,
The form of metals would suddenly be destroyed.
The essential humor never divides
Of her own subject, let her not destroy it.
That if I proved it, I would say the Humans
Produce certain examples in their bodies:
For when sour health makes in us residence.
The mood that offends our bodies' tranquil state,
Suddenly by fury, or medicinal art,
Separating from us separates us from evil:
But if it was the mood by the gasoline released,
Losing her, we would lose both humor and life,
Like those driven by a fatal design,
Lose all their blood, suddenly lose their soul.

a) There are two kinds of cremation; of which the first is the truest & most
natural, which is done when by a long decoction & same regimen of
fire, the Earth begins to grow & thicken, & the water to diminish. Danthyn the Philosopher says : We must distract his sweat, and make him drink it afterwards .


For what the Philosophers call this operation, Cibation, mixing this milk with the earth
leafy. But it must be done by measure, so that its whiteness, its redness, its
goodness, in quantity & its virtue, grows & increases. Now the other sort of inceration is that of which the Poet speaks here, and is to render a hard thing fuseable, and which cannot be melted, so that medicine may intrude. Because after a long work, we have produced the Stone in white & red, it cannot however make the projection: because it could not be resolved, but would remain red earth
or white, which we can easily see that it lacks the fluxibility, which it
must give, so that it has entered into the metals. Our poor Alchemists
Evangelizing have sought this inceration in strange oils, as in
that of Antimony, Arsenic, & the like, but in vain, since Nature does not
feeds only on what is of its Nature, which is Mercury: for

The bodies of perfect metals, altered according to art, suddenly drink,
& naturally their Mercury.

In this consists the foundation of mining & projection, namely that the
Corporeal Mercury, perfect & flowing, increases in quantity, & gives ingredient, & the fixed Mercury, white or red, ferments, & also increases in quantity. By this means you have miners, if you want, & can project when you please. Whereupon I have said enough to the good hearer.

b) The Poet speaks in what flees only of projection, & of
transmutation it makes, great or small, according to the perfection of medicine.
For the more it is subtilized & tinted, the more abundantly it operates, & thus
according to Nature, we complete the imperfect metals. So it should be noted,
as our Poet says, that the said imperfect metals have double Sulphur, viz.
homogeneous, by which with the same Mercurial water, they are only Mercurys
: & an accidental by which they are congealed into lead, tin, copper, iron,
even in gold or silver according to the perfection or imperfection of the said Sulphur, as it
was said in the generation of metals, in which the chief virtue of
freezing lies in the Sulphur, by which the Mercury variously frozen by the
Nature, it yawns, its form according to said Sulphur. But a material cannot endure
two forms, therefore, if one wishes to introduce a better form into the metals
imperfect, they must, according to Aristotle, be reduced to their first matter,
separating the aforesaid accidental form. This is what our
medicine by projection, by which it joins the Mercury of the metals,
which she purges, fixes, & restores in perfection Gold & Silver, separating the combustible & accidental Sulphur, which she exposes to the fire of consumption. He
so it appears that we do not really boast of making gold, nor
transmute, introducing a strange form, as slander would have it
believe because we only heal the sick Mercury of imperfect metals,
by virtue of a perfect Mercury in medicine & all as well as by a
medicine we heal the human body, as our Poet very aptly says, who
in all the rest is clear enough.

What is it now, the soul to its body lines up,
And notwithstanding all art, of a strange is strange?
Show yourself not clear, under this fiction,
O old philosophers, your projection,
And that the thing to which the form is addressed,
For so many have better liven up, either of similar species?
Also real fire, when to the wave it is joined,
For water is not proper to it, it does not animate it.
But like a candle (where tallow & flame,
Are that the body, that like the soul)
Suddenly goes against low another rekindling,
Who half foot under, extinguished, goes smoking,
When against his instinct, to find food,
Light fire descends through dark smoke:
So with the Elixir, the work that is perfect,
True form & true soul to all filthy metal,
Putting on the black metals of its extreme splendour,
Rejoices in falling data its very species.

The sympathy which is between our Elixir & the middle or Mercurial substance,
is the cause of this so sudden tinting & illumination of metals. It is
also what our Poet clearly shows by the flame of a candle
relighting the half-extinguished wick under him against his instinct. Further showing
therefore, that if the metals did not have the power to be animated, this supreme Elixir
cannot give them life any more than fire by a candle dipped in water.
Therefore this incombustible oil can maintain its light only by the wick of
that feathery alum, which is all metal in power. So boiling it in
said incombustible oil, it makes a fire or light which never goes out, of which
we will keep the secret of our lamps hidden under the hieroglyphic letters
of Egypt, lest the superstition of this too curious age extinguish its
sparks.

Voila (a) like the King, pompous in Royal clothes,
Emerging from the fountain, enriches his vassals:
Because imperfect, all metallic bodies,
By this King treasures are made magnificent:
And like the Sun on less clear Stars,
Such is this sucker of gold on the various metals.
This vigorous one, gives light to the Stars,
The other to impure metals its full power:
Similar (b) to the fragrant & reddish saffron,
Take a little bit, then spread it
Over a lot of water, you will see the water being made
Insipid, very fragrant, & yellowish with clear.
What (c) then of Vulcan, ugly of the slender Sky,
And in the island after, Monkeys advanced,
May this King who, deformed, rush to the vase.
Where does he feed him who Nature imitates?
When therefore (d) it is perfect, one believes in quality
The supreme greatness of this desired King.
And the Work must then be remade by the Worker,
If the workman wants to advance his most perfect work.
Because you are no longer Vulcan, make iron incarnate,
The more he increases his virtue to be able to warm up:
Thus the more one anneals this admirable Stone,
The more this Stone increases its incomparable strength:
If (e) that finally single strand of this rare treasure,
(If she were quicksilver) would make the Sea golden!

a) The good Trevisan feigns a fountain in which the gain of gold, which he names
his golden booklet, being thrown away, dies, is reborn, and becomes a very powerful King, who
refreshes, that is to say incere, stands out, having very vermilion flesh, which it
gives food to his vassals, who are the imperfect metals, and then their desire
is accomplished, of which they possess in full right the crown of their King. So
as said Poet notice, said imperfect metals are made magnificent, well
that this King retains for himself a splendor as excellent as the Sun on the
other stars.

b) The Poet shows by his comparison of Saffron the tinting virtue of this Elixir.
Because as a part of Saffron tints the water & gives it its good smell,
even a single grain of this Elixir corrects & tints in its nature a large quantity
of imperfect metal.

c) The Philosophers name the three capital colors three Suns, a white,
one black, one red. Whose our Poet admiring the beauty of this King blushingly
flamboyant, returns to the extreme blackness & ugliness, with which it was smeared
when he sweated in the fountain where he was called the black Sun, or Vulcan, that the
Poets have said son of Jupiter & Juno, & because of his deformity, thrown into
the island of Lemnos, where he was fed Monkeys. By Vulcan they heard this
Sulphur, or that Black King, which we have named above, the fire of
Philosophers, which for its smoothness separates from Azoth, or Mercury
double, named Jupiter & Juno. Yet do they say that this Vulcan or Brimstone
is the son separated from their womb. It's when he swims on Mercurial water, &
after falls to the bottom of the vessel, which they represent by Lemnos, or this
Vulcan is nourished by Monkeys, who are the artists, true imitators of Nature.
What is done in cibation, in which they give food and drink little by little
to this Sulfur its own milk: as we have said of natural cremation.

d) The Poet speaks here of the increase in virtue which is by making increase by
repeated refection or repetition of the work, the Sulfur of icelui, to which alone
consists of the virtue of the congealing & fixing of the Mercury of metals, in
to know had the dissolving again, then the fermenting & incerant: because

The virtue of Sulfur extends only up to a certain proportion of a
term.

Therefore the repeated operation is the cause that the work grows in Sulphur, & by
therefore by virtue of congealing more Mercury, & by fermentation grows in
quantity of said Sulphur. Similar to iron, the more it reddens it in the fire, the more it
increases its heat & the virtue of burning, as our Poet so aptly says.

e) The work thus often annealed, would become infinitely powerful by virtue of
medicinal. What our Poet means, comparing the transmuting virtue
from a very small quantity of this Treasure to the immense size of the Sea. Certainly if
the Ocean was Quicksilver, it could by continual projection be transmuted into
Gold & Silver. But let us leave these Atlas mountains, & these wishes of Midas, & let us hear our Poet more sanely, taking the Sea for our limited Mercury in the surroundings of the ship, & of which a single strand of our red powder thrown into it, can do it all. freeze at the end of Gold. Thus we will leave this infinite increase to the infinite alone: ​​lest, being too enterprising, & wanting, like Phaethon, to lead this ardent chariot inappropriately, we should not rush from the height of bliss into the abyss of any misfortune. It will be enough for us Dorics to support by
this supreme medicine to the defective & almost dying practice of
Galenists, & yet by this means to announce the glorious power of God by
nature. Thomas Aquinas deemed it a very great sin to harbor the secret of
increase to infinity, which believers, we will retain our desires & our
tongues within the bounds of modesty.

(a) So there you have it and Phoenix, whose immortal essence In
ashes converted, in the fire is renewed. This is like art
finds a robust animal, Who being vegetal, yet made
mineral. This is he who says, Let your care never leave me, And
my loyal help will not leave your merit. And this is how we
can a treasure discover, To be able every day a hundred
miles men feed. Because as we can give
bright Light Without diminishing the customary clarity with fire:
He on whom Heaven has poured this great good,
Rich, can impart it without diminishing it in any way.
Less fortunate (b) are the Kings: Their greatnesses
threatened
Very often, they are only rich with thoughts:
To find happiness in the world, they make themselves unhappy,
They command people, people have two:
They often dare not, like this Tantalus,
Trying to have the good that spreads out in front of them:
Where he who prudent, enjoys this beautiful gift,
Richer than he wants, seems to the great Solomon
O Secret of secrets! O Infinite Wealth!
Well who, too much envied, against none have envy!
That you do well to gift both the mind and the body.
One of great science, and the other of treasures!
Didn't I tell you too, Death follows my nature,
I am the pure wheat sown in the pure land:
I bear great & alone, great & diverse names,
And who enjoys me enjoys the Universe?

a) The Poets wishing to veil this Treasure of Treasures, & its increase, have
feigns a Phoenix, which dying always produces of itself, another of its
a species born, dying, and reviving in the fire. So that under this fable,
they wanted us to hear as the real Phoenix, who is this divine Elixir is
born of fire, namely Sulphur: & is converted to ashes in the fire, when
the work is again resolved into black Sulphur: & is resuscitated in the fire, when it
becomes Sulfur or Red Elixir again. So he is always the same & unique bird,
sacrificing itself to the rays of the Sun, which is done in our fermentation, reiterated
by Gold the Sun of metals. It is also this Phoenix, which, as our
Poet, although he is animal, because he vivifies everything, is also vegetal, because
that it grows in quantity & in virtue, & mineral for the eyes of the material from which it is born. It is also this bird which, being born, cries that the artist does not leave it in order
that he does not leave the artist: as the stake is erected for him, so that he may
burn, revive, & multiply infinitely. Increase by which one can
achieve so many uses that it would be impossible to recount them. We
we will only recite someone, starting with the one who barks after this
is Royal, not only the dirty Herdsman, but the great Princes, Kings &
Monarchs, the learned & the ignorant, the Page & the idiot, & in general every man of whatever state he may be. What drives them to this search is the desire
immoderate wealth of the world. In fact, they are the real antidote against
miseries born of poverty, which brings only inconvenience, kills
often the body & the spirit, disturbs the understanding, & always holds the door
open to despair. But this Treasure of Treasures remedies it, because the possessor
of which he cannot have fault of anything, himself, in time of peace or of war,
abundance or sterility. Nothing can prevent him from seeing every day
increase goods. His heritage follows him everywhere, everywhere opens doors to him,
acquires the favor of the great & the friendship of the small. However, he has nothing to do with
Courtier, nor to beg anything from the Prince. His mind rests, & does not know that it is
twinges of envy throbbing. Here he is, then, blessed and assured
against this miserable shipwreck which accompanies his birth and threatens his
old age. Besides that, he holds in his hand the only instrument to be able to
execute at any hour the effects of this much recommended Charity, by which
man stand little, only show real man. And yet the more generosity he does,
the more he has the means to do; as our Poet very clearly shows, by his
comparison of candlelight.

b) This good companion was right, who having asked the Tyrant of Syracuse to
to enjoy his Royal Throne only one day, revoked his mad request, seeing the
bliss that he imagined receiving from it, clinging to a trickle, & being fermented by
the horror & threat of a dangerous scimitar. Also this King was not Tyrant,
when by such a sweet beverage he quenched the insane thirst of this thirsty man, showing, by
this stratagem, to how many dangers is subject the state of Kings & Princes: State
most often bloody & fatal, both by chasing it and by possessing it,
& leaving him. Witness to this are the four extinct Monarchies, and that of the Turk.

Of which we can rightly say that this sentence from Solon to Croesus, NEMO
ANTE OBITUM BEATUS, is mainly aimed at the greats of the Earth.
For this our Poet says very well that Kings are less happy than the
possessor of this incomparable Treasure, which can never perish, like the
scepters & the Treasures of the Great. For whether he is in the water, in the earth, or in the
fire, he stays there without being able to retrograde to a worse state, like the image
Monarchic of Daniel, of which the Golden head degenerated into a chest
of Silver, this one in a belly of Copper, and this one in thighs of Iron, and
of clay. What we know to have happened under the Monarchies of the Babylonians,
under the Persians, the Greeks, and finally under the Romans, terror of the Universe, of which he
we only have clay left. Or contrary, this inexhaustible Treasure is born of Iron,
of which Copper is made, of Copper Silver, of Silver, Gold, and of this Gold this
True phoenix, which by its very death makes it more durable & more glorious,
giving in the dexter of its possessor the means to live long, & in its
left wealth & honors. For the rest, this Star, conqueror of all
light, serves as a sure guide for him to acquire sapience, developing his mind
fog of this vulgar & roadside doctrine of the Peripatetics: Doctrine
whom he rightly disdains, seeing that she is nothing compared to this secret of
secrets, by which nothing can be kept secret from him.

I (a) only want to tell this worthy Pierre,
Makes it, oh wonder, useful! Unbreakable glass,
That she makes many a gem, & her strong liquor
Gives old Pearl a vivid color.
But (b) should divine assistance be silenced here
What does this great Medicine do to human bodies?
Alas! Eternal Father, you are not like the friend,
Who promises a lot, gives half pleasure.
Especially since man can, filled with your generosity,
By advancing his property, delaying his old age.
For if Gold ground into powder, or Gold boiled,
Can, without being digested, restore health,
This Stone, dry tempered, will not be able to
Who to cook in blood, in the liver is digested,
Hot, we restore the radical mood,
And change the white hair, a wet coldness?
That if art has shown this supreme Elixir,
By a moderate fire, having almondd oneself,
And if it cures perfect, imperfect metals,
Why can't he deprive us of all evil?
It is this Stone also that the sons of Science,
Name, to hide it, Fountain of Youth:
For nothing under Heaven has such virtue
To lift up the body of old, dejected old age.
That one (c) is not surprised, by art & Nature,
Man, of himself not pure, does a work so pure:
It would be surprising if a man who was made
Noble, agreeable, reasonable, was unaware of this secret.
Because hey! Why would this common mother be,
The benign Nature, to the harsher Humans,
Than to Eagles, Crows, Stags, & Serpents,
Who knows what can strip them of years?
And why, if he whose spirit without culture,
With his vigorous oxen slays the hard Earth,
Knows golden hair from his ungrateful field,
And people stealing matter & state,
Will not the excellent son of art know
Certain principles of such rare science,
And cannot the spirit that can ascend to Heaven,
Earthly guts leafing through the folds?

a) The Wise says that idleness is the Devil's pillow, on which man,
falling asleep thinks only of vices, and can only be awakened from them by work
& occupancy. This is why our Poet, only wanting the one who will have reached
the goal of the science he teaches, languishes in dull idleness, or indulges
illicit exercises, discovers for him an occupation, where he can employ him with
as much fun as it is useful. So he says our Stone makes the glass
malleable, renews the Pearl, and whose strong liquor makes many a gem. Fact
the liqueur of the white compone makes the Pearls: that of the red the Rubies. Also we
can prepare so much, as the ancient Philosophers say, said compound
white, that thrown on the Crystal he hardened it in Diamond: & that of the red prepared
& thrown on the said Crystal transmutes it into a carbuncle. Red oil, drawn from the Eagle
white, has such virtue, that if an obscure Amethyst is thrown into it & fomented in
icelle by a gentle heat, the space of a month, it becomes a Ruby high in
color, better than the others, & enduring all trials. Finally all stones
precious being immersed there for twenty & four hours, & fed by a
moderate heat, rise to such a high degree that they put their fellows to shame.
You will therefore leave the games and the vile exercises to the children, and run after these precious jewels, with which, however, you will not enrich your fingers, but the
selling, you will buy more precious ones, which help the poor, the
orphans, & widows, & the blessing of the Lord, to change your
Treasure from here below, to the one who enriches eternally, the soul & the body.
Our Poet declares here the infinite mercy of God towards man, more
greater, without comparison, than that of man towards his neighbour. Because no
happy to give the children of Adam contentment to their spirit, and
riches their wishes, he still gives them remedies for the diseases of their
body, & the inconveniences of old age. This old age is nothing else
that the destruction & separation of the three principles, Salt, Sulphur, & Mercury,
assembled from the beginning into the composition of the body. Separation by
which the subject dissolves, & returns to what it had been composed of. Of which
we can collect that if the said qualities of these three parts, could always be
maintain proportionally force & action, without one overcoming the other,
the body would never die. Such is the Gold in this perfect Elixir, to which these parts
being incorruptible, if they dissolve into digestible matter, no doubt they
can infuse their virtue into the human body. Not that man, by this means,
can immortalize, but it is possible, without excess, to maintain in its strength & vigour,
until the term prefixed by the Divine law. This Stone is therefore, as our
Poet, the fountain of youth, so celebrated by the Philosophers, although the
most of our putative doctors, as well as the ignorant populace, believe
be it fables & follies. However they say themselves that the only smell
Gold which enters restaurants, being in suitable liquor or taken by the
mouth powder (which cannot be digested in any way) restores the body &
rejuvenates man: & in fact, as our same poet says in his Week,

Certainly Gold is used for the body: the stain it erases
Who uncivilly perches on his face:
The impudent wart he undermines little by little,
And set apart from the incarnate of fire,
All red, wine red, the limbs strengthened,
By its sweet liquor our heart vivifies,
Of polyps, of scab, and ringworm cleanses,
Aid to vital spirits, & ethics remits.

That if it is thus used against certain diseases, this great Elixir made drinkable by
a repeated multiplication digested in blood & joining in radical humor,
works much more on the human body, by way of restoration, than smell, or
Gold body powder. However, if we give it to man outwardly
ensaffroned with the humor of gall, & internally yellow with avarice, he will be able to
enjoy a lot. Because he yawns the color of Gold, we could make Nature
by an ecstasy of joy, doubling the forces of the patient, would chase
miraculously what before she could not, stripped of the vigor of the
sick. Here is the jaundice cured by their powder of gold: even like the girl
of a great Lady from Chalices in Albigensian, who was saddened by this
yellowish mood, taken from the hands of a Charlatan claiming to be dogmatic, from the
Gold powder, & iron filings, mixed together. But she still became
more yellow, even dyed up to more than twenty & four carats. However the trick
from her governess awaited the birth of this fecal amalgam, which received
in a glass chamber pot, she washed, as the midwife cleans
the child of the daubs of the matrix, then yawned it to me to test if this
Metal King had only been destroyed by the damsel stomach. I found not:
but doubting that the good woman had washed enough this metallic couple I did it
bathe in the fountain of the former King of Crete, then go through the thunderbolts of
Vulcan. Thus we found that the Gold was there in the same weight, & more beautiful
than before, except for some grain which might have been lost in the maze
casings of the Damoiselle. I wanted to insert here this Galenic stratagem,
because he makes me believe that this inveterate error only came from yawning at the
patient with raw remedies, without separating the impure from the pure. that since
the stomach attracts the virtue of Gold which is so fixed, massive & corporeal, without
even he digests it, why couldn't he separate the virtue of a medicine without
comparison more digestible, even very often alimentary. The Damsel
aforesaid will be able to deny the major, at least as far as his illness was concerned, & for me
if I were judge of this difference, I would only condemn this kind of people to
to empty from the good cities, as of old from Rome, as well as plagues from the
Republic, but would confine them with their filthy cooks in the center of our
Antipodes, or at least I will forbid them water & fire, so that they eat
their partridges, capons & meats all raw, & without washing. We will demonstrate the infinite errors of this kind of Doctors, in our Spagyric Arsenal, please God to lengthen our days still more, to make the ammunition appear at the first noise of war, accompanied by our invincible squadrons, marching under the handlebars experience. But about experience, virtue so much
necessary, in Medicine, she recently discovered a Simple
whose almost incredible virtue was completely unknown to Dioscorides,
Matthiole, & even of Dalestham, who overloaded the herbarium with about a hundred
Simple unknowns before. This miraculous herb is called Lit à part,
specifies according to the experience of a serious Physician against asthma &
dependencies: & was ordained for any remedy to a French gentleman,
suffered from this unfortunate illness, to take part of it every day, & his wife
the other. Prodigious thing, to partially cure the husband by the use of this herb
taken in part by his wife, & which magnifies & proves the truth of
Hippocratic art, that cautery completes the cure of neglected illnesses, &
that the act of a certain Doctor who had a charlatan's teeth pulled, to
verify what Paracelsus says, that they do not know how to cure with all their science a
simple toothache.

c) Hermes the thrice great, having diligently considered the being of man, &
comparing it to that of other creatures, exclaims, saying: O man
truly admirable animal, which deserves to be adored! In another
place, He knows the kinds of Demons, he communicates with God, even
could be deified . And David in the eighth psalm, You have rendered him very little
lower than the Angels . But what would Hermes have said, if he had lived when God
even surrendered our brother, adopting our human nature? Of which restored in
our lost bliss, we can have knowledge of all things, if
we ask it with an unfeigned heart to him who is the way, the life and the truth.
Considering this, our Poet is right to allege that if the birds & the like
Unreasonable creatures know how to choose what serves to prolong their life & their
health: with all the more reason the rightful King of all Creatures must know. And
that if man can penetrate into Heaven, he can still better
penetrate into the secrets of the Earth.

(a) Isn't it a great case that so many diseases By this one
Elixir can be banned? A single disease is cured by a single
medicine, For a cause begets an effect only. Poor
folks ! &' I say only one thing, Depending on who takes it,
various causes cause. Do we not see all of a sudden, making
miscellaneous On mud & wax, in the eye of the universe? Also from
this great good the perfect substance, Though only one thing,
insofar as it is extracted From the prime Elements, & retains their
power, Different effects can make us well see. Really,
(b) I do not believe that also without this Stone, These Persians who,
first, possessed the Earth, Had little so long in it
to extricate oneself, Even at five times a hundred years healthy to engender. I
know that it is held that God increased their age, To see
rather by them grow the human lineage:
That nearer they came out of the hands of their Maker,
The more a good nature reinforced their greenness:
And that the fruit souls, before the bitter revenge
Of the universal flow, had more substance:
But I know well that also the first of Mortals
Knew of the facts of God the natural effects,
And his prudence be a lasting thing,
Who could make a body incorruptible for a long time:
So much so that by cabal we have drawn from our own,
Of this great Elixir the incredible good.
I do not ignore, however, that Heaven in all ages,
Of such a sacred secret has not discovered the use.
Ever the great King above all Kings high,
Has in his closet many a treasure reserved,
For better from time to time, showing their excellence,
To bear witness to the immortal abundance of one's goods.
Those who for a hundred years, guided by a beautiful desire,
In lodges of pine, of stilted cordage.
Were not afraid, new Typhis, to tempt fortune
On the insolent waves of perfidious Neptune,
Have discovered in the world a new world,
Seems of this great All to conceal the most beautiful:
Thus from some time, those to whom the exercise
Has of an art divine taught notice,
Have unearthed this good, that a long & gloomy oblivion,
The ashes of ignorance had buried.

a) All that is indeed scattered in the circumstance of a circle, is heaped up in the
center of itin power. Thus the light scatters through the vast circuit of Heaven in
indeed, is picked up in one in power, namely in a single Sun. Likewise all
the medicinal virtues sprinkled in an infinity of plants, fish,
of birds, terrestrial animals, minerals & precious stones, is collected in
effect in our Leonine Sun. This is why he can, alone, cure all kinds of
illnesses, like the real Apollo & the only Medicine King. Others
natural things, having this virtue only in small sparks, cannot cure
each one only one disease. But this vigorous Sun can, alone as much as
all the simples in the world: preserve human bodies from all corruption &
disease, maintains them in their beauty, and delays their old age and their death,
until the end that the wisdom of God has prescribed for every creature. So much that
this only means can redim us, during the time that we have to live, of
inconveniences which make the old man, as our Poet says in a naive
description of old age,

Puny! Trembles, balks, is emotionally attacked,
Is provoked without pain, hardly revoked.
Had to, drags his years sagging in misery,
Suffer the iron laws of the harsher age,
Collapses, complains, dreams, & seems, bending his back,
From his wrinkled mouth begin these words:
Now that the seasons have returned races
Worsen with languor my rusty body of years,
O Earth, bury me, limit my past evils,
And in your hollow lap take my weary limbs.

Now that this Elixir, being a single thing, can cause various effects, the Poet
here elegantly proved by the various action of the Sun on wax & mud. Whether
although it is like the Sun, which, although it is a simple thing,
being neither cold nor hot, neither dry nor humid, provide everything where it is needed:
warming the cold & cooling the hot, moistening the dry, & drying
the moist, hardening the soft, & softening the hard. So this Medicine is the
Most perfect creature in the world, absolute in all its numbers, &
impregnable to all the efforts of Time. However, no crazy Doctors
want to maintain that we can find Simples, both mineral and vegetable,
which are of the Nature of Gold, and from which a universal medicine can be drawn,
imitating the virtue of ours. But except their honor they are mistaken, & save
the truth. For there is nothing, neither inside nor outside the mines, which equals Gold in virtue
medicinal. So we should not be surprised if this Apollo, doing his job of
doctor, can cure all kinds of ailments.

b) The Poet alleges here the reasons of those who, rather driven by envy than
of experience against this beautiful art, try by frivolous imaginations to obscure
luster of that divine Medicine: by which, as is probable,
those who lived before & after the flood fomented their long life by a
vigorous health. All that we could bring on the contrary is only for
We. For as for the blessing of God, it must be greater now
to those who, seeing with the eyes of faith, he through whom are blessed all
nations of the Earth, & living according to his law, can, according to his promise,
achieve a long life. Moreover, we can by this Medicine really
feeder, to make up for the lack of our foods, and to make them recover
the efficacy which their first age had contributed to them. Because this Elixir nourishes the
the radical humor, & redoubles all the natural faculties, principally the
digestive, & the separative virtue. Also, as an analog to the Celestial Sun, it
vivifies what one takes by mouth, & transmutes it into balm, real food
of the balm of man, increasing it, clarifying it, & dissipating the cold
humors, & finally usually hilarious passages of the spirit of life; of which
opilation is the only cause of disease and death. These admirable virtues
often encouraged the Sages to illustrate their century by the discovery of this rich
jewel. Of which if our age is surprised to hear of some who have possession of it,
he must also be surprised at inventions unknown to previous centuries,
like the triumphant discovery of the Indies of which our Poet speaks, formerly
unknown even to the great Knight of the air, the son of Danae, & to his brother
the indomitable Theban: Witnesses the columns or rather mountains bearing
his name again. To return to the long life, I refer the curious reader to
Dialogue of Démorgorgon, & of Raimond Lully, as also in the treatise of
the admirable power of the art & of Nature of Roger Bacon Anglais, & au
discourse of the two parties on the long life of a certain wandering Jew, alleged by
Cayer in his history of France.

It is the only drinkable gold, and the only fruit of life:
It is the unfeigned Nectar, & the real Ambroise:
It's the grass that Jason's lover once
Will unburden the decrepit Æson of his years

Touching potable Gold, it will not be out of place to speak of it in passing, because
that it is the subject that trots the most among the speeches of these two extremities of
Doctors, Galenists & Paracelsists, some savoring him as scholars,
others despising him as ignorant, imitating the Fox who despised the fruit
that the difficult access did not allow him to taste. As for the quality of the subject gold
is in its nature & in its metallic form warmer than all the Simples of the
world, however not excessively, but temperament, having in itself no
harmful & corrosive heat, both in its composition and in its reduction to oil.
It also has no humidity or dryness that hinders its duration or our health.
For it is tempered in all its qualities, and has them in itself so harmoniously and proportionately united, that there is born that sympathy, by which one
keeps the other without discord. That's what makes him incorruptible, & does the same
that excessive fire, which consumes & devours everything else, cannot do
breach, but purges it, embellishes it & enriches it, as we have said above.
For it is the matter in power of the true Salamander of the Philosophers, which
rejoice in the fire, & do with truth what falsehood attributes to the animal
which bears this name. This is why the Sages take it, & make it their Gold
drinking particular & specific for the heart, & an excellent remedy to mingle with other specific servants in the noble & ignoble parts, in which it works wonders. But it is not yet the true potable Gold, of which our Poet speaks: for it
does not hear common drinkable Gold which does not have the virtue of our great Elixir. What
is proved by the action that both have on metals: which is a great
secret to note It is therefore necessary that the grain of the Gold die & be altered, then being
resurrected, he is this General Medicine & truly Apollonian, invigorating
all things Medicine by which even a King of Egypt named Xophar
prolonged his magpie up to three hundred years, as recites Crinot who was very
excellent philosopher among the Germans. Finally, this potable Gold is represented by the
Medea's remedy for her lover's father, as our Poet alleges.

This (a) is therefore not your art, O Alchemist runners,
O deceivers, o thieves, ignorant, & Sophist:
This is not your art, Souffleurs, with smoky eyes,
May your goods and time be consumed for nothing,
And who always suffering the black smell of Sulphur,
Gathered (b) these Spirits from the Plutonic chasm.
Also does your youthful art bloom,
But youth finally by your art can die:
Witness those who lose means honor & life.
Reward, deceived, their great deceptions.
May thus always be the Sages who without end,
Burst their stomach against your crafty art,
See you find Death, & lose the mystery
Of which one puts in metals some adulterous complexion.
If (c) however, O you to whom the Heavens
Have deigned to discover this precious treasure,
Esteem only of oneself, never the human race
Towards a secret so lofty stilts his knowledge:
For God has revealed it, to show mortals
How much more beautiful will spiritual goods be,
That if you use it to feed your vice,
Or like Midas, hosts black with avarice,
Being rich in goods and poor in reason,
You will have a healthy body, an unhealed soul.
I have (d) therefore without mast, without antennae, without sail,
To the sole and gentle aspect of an infallible Star,
Discovered a Peru, a thousand times more fruitful
Than the golden judges of the richest Indians.
I have made that this knowledge is only such as the Viper,
Where easy access to the big secret does not adhere:
For sums Prometheus, (& no offense to the Gods)
To perfect a great art, I flew to Heaven,
Et Voila (my Damon) as sometimes my Muse
On remote fields, while playing, has fun:
Because often it is better to follow a rare subject,
Than the well-trodden train of a familiar object.

a) Experience attests every day that every creature tends towards its center, or
place of its origin. I will keep silent here about the celestial bodies, and the things under the moon, and will speak only of man, who has fallen from his felicity, by the crime of his
first father, nevertheless does not fail to feel sometimes the twinges of
divine rays which he enjoyed in this blessed abode of Eden. That is why
he cannot rest, but his soul floating in this decrepit body, as in a
nacelle fought by contrary waves, aspires only to the desired port, to which
being able to arise before having paid the tribute which it owes to Nature, it embraces
the shadow of what he knows does not represent the contentment of his soul
prisoner. From this is born the diversity of states, one of which seeks its sovereign
good in dominion, the other in justice, the other in Medicine, the other in
other more or less noble vacations, according as his soul is more or less
clouded by the vapors of the temperament of the body. But those are the most
happy who know how to choose, like the Madeleine, the best part, the
contemplation of the Law of God. However, any state whatsoever cannot
subsist without the underground treasures, all bark after & there are Philosophers
in each of them. Of these Philosophers, none, but few, have sought from all
time, this beautiful art, by a methodical study, & have come to the end, after a
truly Herculean work: the others succeed, favored by the assistance
Divine, & with the help of their very happy Star, which from their birth pushes them
in search of this Royal art, as in possession of their true heritage. AT
such therefore belongs to this science, not to those whom our Poet baptizes here
variously according to their merits, calling them first, runners
Alchemists. In fact these will only publish false recipes &
erroneous, which most often they do not hear themselves. One will say to have
one projection of one weight in ten, the other in twenty: the other boasts of strength
thirdlets, pars cum parte , & mediums for the red, one at eighteen & eight carats, the other at twenty, the other at Gold of ecus, the other at Gold of Ducat, the other to the most
high color that ever was. Some boast of knowing who supports
the cast, the others all judgments. That if you want it for the white, they this
fail to sell you some, namely a white one at ten denarii, the other at eleven,
the other with nipple silver, the other with white fire, the other with the fingerboard. But here
much otherwise assorted merchants, who are the bearers of tinctures, of which
one shall be named, the work of such Pope, King, Bishop, or such other names,
so that we add more faith to it, and that we allow ourselves to be deceived on credit under the noise
uncertain that these great personages had these works or tinctures. But he gets away
must investigate, and examine or have examined these suitors with their
goods, lest falsehood gain, to your disadvantage, the place of
the truth. It is a matter of great concern that several great Lords & brave minds do not
can still be made wise by the example of others, nor hold bridle to their
levity, so as not to let go of their belief in the persuasions of these pipers, &
principally in something so important, where it goes to the honor of their house, &
the loss of their means. Now this evil is so rooted in many, pushed from one
insatiable desire for riches, of which these Sophists promise a World, that for
to cure them they would have to be melted again, or at least cemented with Hellebore salt.
But is there no other cause, someone will tell me, why we let ourselves
thus catching these accursed birdcatchers in the glue. There are several even & well
different, the most common of which is the inability to know how to speak in
understanding the possibility of Nature, & only being able to consider if what
these ignoramuses promise, were, they would first make themselves rich,
would stop at their place, and would have no need to run around the country in this way. Of Done this
what drives them is not so much the desire to teach their neighbor their knowledge, as
the one they have to grab the purse from him. This is why our Poet calls them to
good right, thieves & Sophists, because having reached the end of their career, they
amuse most of them, constrained by poverty, to give on the nose of Kings &
Princes, & caught on this beautiful exercise, find themselves rich forever. But the
more suitable epithet than the Poet yawns them here is, when he shovels them
Ignorant: but he would have accommodated them still better by calling them mad in
crimson. I want to bring some of them to the theater, the first of which has
played a very beautiful farce in a village in Holland, named Egmont sur mer,
belonging to the Lord who bears its name. He had resided for a long time in
Rome, & there grabbed a few passages from Holy Scripture, & from Physics, for he was otherwise a good Peripatetician, based himself on the principles of the Creation of the
world, namely that water being the first matter of which God made the Earth, it
also had to make a land of water, & in it sow Gold, & in there the
downgrade to mining. And because the Poets & Philosophers say that Venus
was born from the foam of the Sea, he felt that it was necessary to take it in full
Moon. In fact, the said Count of Egmont saw him one day when he had put himself up to the
knees in the Sea, where he collected the foam of the waves. What seeing said
Lord, delighted with this spectacle, asked him what he wanted to do with this slime of
Neptune. Then he related to her with masterful gravity his great mystery,
accompanied by many passages from the holy letters, and several reasons
Aristotelian: because one would have been worth nothing without the other. But said Lord
being able to believe that such madness can fall into the mind of the one he thought good
Philosopher, wanted to see the end of it, which was that he had filled a large matrass with
this salt water up to the third part, & hermetically sealed then put it to
freeze under a lamp fire. I believe he is still after, so stubborn will he be
to the content of his recipe, & have presented this one to you, as the Prince of Fools
Alchemists.

The second preferred to do work, and lived in a small town of the same
County of Holland, called Vuorden. This one having seen a small Treatise of the learned
Henry Conrad German, titled DE CHAO PHISICO PHYSICOCHEMICE
CATHOLICO ET MAGNO, to which he had read that the subject of which the Philosophers
draw their menses to dissolve the Gold was a common thing, and that everyone
trampled under foot, instead of the other taking water, took loam,
which he claimed to be the true Catholicon, and distilled from it a sulphurous spirit
not flammable like brandy. What seeing, the poor man
already thought he was in Colchos, giving himself custody only of the land he was taking
for his subject, we made a kind of clod which, the Dutch call
Peats, which are full of Sulphur, and is there nothing else used for
fire, because of the defect of the wood.

The third, who was in Utrecht in Holland, was not so misguided at all, but
amalgamating the Gold with the vulgar Mercury, made an amalgam of it which he put in a
long-necked matrass, the sigillant, & held it for three years in the reverberation of the
Sun, saying that this heat was the true fire of the Philosophers. Because it should be noted
that this Philosopher was an Anabaptist, or rather a pack-ass, completely preserved, like his
sect, in spirituality, for which he must forgive if he used the same fire.
Let's come to the Hayes where is the Court of the States of the United Provinces, & the right path
of Egmont in France. There was a learned personage there, who having seen the
passage where Hermes says, Honor the Stones, because in here is a soul
Divine : hearing it literally, took white & transparent pebbles, &
calcined & drew out the salt, which he distilled into a spirit, to draw the soul into it
earthly Phoebus or Gold, & thus produce the radical solvent, but in
vain, as experience showed him.

Let's make a jaunt to England, & we'll see there in London
certain gentleman, who having walked through the great hall of the Royal Castle said
Westminster, & having there cast a view of the rich panes & their paintings, saw there
represented, among other rare things, the facts of Jason in Colchos. When he
imagined that this story (which allegorically covers the work of the
Philosophers) was painted there without some great mystery. Whose being well
flattered in his mind, he began to work on the glass, to draw out this red glass,
or carbuncle of the Philosophers: & is so strongly obstinate in it, that it has served as a fable
& a laughing stock to everyone.

Let's see now if we won't find any of these flour-coated madnesses in
France. I can say that I have known an infinite number of them during my residence, &
because it is necessary that each male has his female, we will marry the madmen of
Flanders & England with the fools of France. So a certain Damsel
residing three or four leagues from Abeville, having read, as she confessed to me,
that the Sulfur was the Agent of the great work, and the Mercury the matter, married them
together, & having pulverized them, put them in the Sun to whiten, moistening them all
the days with water that she had drawn from the Iron, according to her recipe. And said that
by this slight heat of the Sun, and the incessant virtue of iron, everything would turn
in red powder like cinnabar, which would do wonders on metals. I believe that
if this had been with the Anabaptist above mentioned, they would have
something good, being all in agreement, something rare however, touching the
Heavenly fire.

I could allege some of the Court, were it not for a lady's respect,
whose obligations I have to him will make me forgive those of his quality. I
I am therefore going to Angers, where I find the most subtle in Philosophy that
our Century has given birth to. She is a damsel, who, like the preceding one,
mishearing the Sages, when they command to take a man's blood
angry, wanted to steal these words again, saying that the blood of a man
was uncertain because of the excess that incontinence may cause him to commit, &
that it would be better to take the blood of an angry child still a virgin, because
perhaps she was afraid of making a Pockmarked Philosopher's Stone. so that she
watched the hour when a young boy came begging at his door, who, to incise his
anger, she had her servant scolded and insulted. The child, to this alms
unexpected, is moved, & stone street against the chambrière, which testifies his
angry nature, & the dignity of his magnanimous blood, to make him this great
Elixir.

So we coax him, & by some particular subtlety, we make him
see fit to draw blood from him. What was done, even in such place, & such quantity,
that child lost his sight. For what has happened since, I defer to
Gentlemen of Angers. Besides, when I think of these fine follies, and those that I
could still recite, I lose hope of being able to get out of it. For this I
I will stop here, for fear of angering this sex too much, which I have always honored, as
I still say: & in exchange for the story I made of two of them,
I will end this statement with a masculine gender, as I began with him.
It is that a certain runner persuaded a great lord standing near
Rennes in Brittany, that the material of the Stone was drawn from the brains of all
kind of small birds. This Lord, or the believer, or wanting to test his
piperies, allowed him to fire on his land; what he executed so well, assisted by
several good arquebusiers, whom he depopulated in a short time, the whole forest of the said
Lord. Finally he distilled the brains of this unfortunate hunt, to draw
mercurial water according to Ripley, who says in his twelve gates, that the birds we
bring the subject of the Stone. For their flesh, I believe the dogs of this
Lord had the smallest part of it, & that it was not crumpled by Mons.
The Alchemist without mixing it well with the best Mercurial water of
Bacchus, whose cellar of the said Lord is always well stocked.

b) Those whom our Poet compares to the Spirits of the Plutonic abyss, are our
executioners of Sulphurs, principally of Arsenic & Réagal, which similar to
venomous Dragons, infect so much by their vaporous breath, our
Philosophers, let some teeth fall out, others bring back the
Phthisis, the high evil, & other diseases, of which our Poet says very well that their
art does not make youth bloom, but causes it to die, infecting the balm of the body. I
often met on the most pleasant shows in the world, finding
dreamer between the ruins of his furnaces, making a mine, as
a second Aeneas lamenting his disaster, among the ruins of Troy. You would have
saw fired furnaces, saddled stills, burst matras, retortes
melted, broken crucibles, even, which is more damage, pelicans
taken off, & their wings clipped. For the metals, everything was saved by retirement,
& only the mineral dung remained for the breath of the wind in the battle of Vulcan,
meat consigns to such operators. That if all those whose intention is not good
chasing this Royal Philosophy, were always served the same dishes
the appetite to lavish their time & the good of their neighbor would be taken away from them, &
this noble science would no longer serve as a fable among those who use the abuses
of these pipers to emblazon it. I also urge all those who already can
having tasted some experience in this true art, of no longer believing in light
those who seem to prostitute their tinctures of such great price, and that they
examine before putting them to work. For this great work of which the
Poet, & the great dyes do not make game for these affronters, who
seeking in the common Sulphurs, & hastening to suddenly become rich,
lose much good Gold, & fail to find true tincture, blame art,
as false, and thereby entertain the novices of this science, the
blinding by their short & particular lies. In fact they only know
is that great dyes, & ignore the difference between a dye
wet, & one dry. They do not hear when the black Sulfur must be extinguished
by one's own liquid or Azotic fire, nor when one must quench the ardent Lion
in his own blood, and when he must be resuscitated. They still don't hear when
the first solution is completed & broken, & when the last colors
terrestrial must appear in the decoction. Finally these perfect ignoramuses
know how to apply a Dye to a metal. So ask
diligently how the Tincture you are promised will end in
the operator. For the dry Tincture is brought to whiteness by the viscosity without
appearance of no color, & the humid is produced & whitens by the solution & ascension: then by the extinction of the celestial & Philosophical colors. Therefore the Philosopher who will not hear all this before beginning to work, will not


never anything worthwhile in this universal science. That if he achieves something
little thing, it will be, by chance, like a blind man hitting a bird
with a stroke of an arrow, & could not do the same afterwards. This is how it
happens to the ignorant, who without thinking about it, find some truth & science but
wanting to start over can't come back, but are forced to leave everything &
abandon themselves to despair.

c) The Poet demonstrates here the great good that God does to those whom he allows to
find this inestimable Treasure, of which considering the size & the difficult access,
he says that the Philosopher must flee all presumption, lest he think he is there
achieved by his own ability. Which is impossible as Geber says in his
Sum, saying that he who presumes to find this art by books, will succeed
very late. Because, he says in another place, we wrote the real
practical for ourselves, mixing in the way of inquiring . That's why i
there is also its procedure in various chapters. And Alphidus said, The
Philosophers who preceded us hid their main intention
under various puzzles . And Geber in his Solar Medicine, The Philosophers
wrote invented science only for themselves . So that's why
man cannot find it for himself by reading the books of the Philosophers,
for the great difficulties that sees him. 'Cause what can beget more
difficulties than the meeting of such great annoyance between so many authors
renamed, or even between the writings of the same Author? As evidenced by
writings of Rasis when he says in the Book of Lights, I have shown enough in my
delivers the true ferment required for the multiplication of the Tinctures of
metals, which I have elsewhere affirmed not to be the true leaven, abandoning
true knowledge to him who has the judgment to know it .
Touching the matter of our divine work, if one writes that it is cheap,
found on the dunghills, & that the rich, & the poor have it, as Zeno says, & others in the Peat of the Philosophers: incontinent Barseus will say, What you
looking for is not cheap . On the other hand another will say that she is strong
precious, & can only be found at great expense. For instruments, if one has
says that we must prepare our work in various vessels and furnaces, as
Geber in his Somme, there are others who will ensure that only one is needed
vessel & furnace for everything, as do Lully, Rasis, Alphidius & others.
Then some take nine months to procreate our real Phoenix or great
work, like Rasis: & Rosinus & Plato want a year. Moreover, we find the terms of this science so diverse that it is impossible for us, as Raimond says
Lully, to discover the truth between so many diversities, if God does not inspire us by
his Holy Spirit, or reveals it to us by some learned Philosopher. So
why we hardly see any who understand it, and know nothing of it until
after their death: because having acquired this science with such great difficulty, they
would seal to themselves, if possible, instead of communicating it to
others. So it shouldn't be strange if you don't see anyone who boasts
to have done this divine work, but to wonder how there is none who are
come to this knowledge. So we must give God the honor, since he
give this secret, as Geber says, to whomever he pleases, and take it away when it pleases him
seems. You will therefore be careful not to use the fruits of this golden tree
otherwise than in charitable works, so that this good will not be the last you
receive from God: & do not use it, as our Poet says, to
feed your vice, if you consider the greatness of him who chose you
for possessor among so many millions of people, & measure the excellence of the
gift, & the immortal bliss that this inexhaustible Treasure can make you conceive
no way that God is still preparing you if you bring this rich talent to
his praise & to his glory.

d) The Poet taking leave of his dear friend, whom he calls his Damon, doing
allusion to the faithful & reciprocal love of Damon & Pythias, said to have
discovered real New Lands, & demonstrated the knowledge of this great
science. But to make it like a brief recapitulation, I say that the subject
of it includes in itself the true scourge of metals, which regenerated into another
being that the ancients call their first matter, produces beasts very
furious, the Lyon, the Crocodile, & the Dragon, who devour, crush, & make, in their anger, the imperfect perfect. However, Lyon generates in its own
forces the Eagle, who brings him his meat, and feeds him. Afterwards, the Crocodile devours
the Lyon, & the Crocodile is eaten by the fiery Lion. Take it then, & the blood of the Lion & burn it with great force with the Eagle, & of these three will become one. It will be the aforesaid Golden tree, which will at all times bear its fruits & seeds, from which will be born delicious apples. One can cut tokens & branches from this tree, & bury them or transplant them, so that they also bear many fruits, & in various ways which will not degenerate from the tree from which they will be cut, although they are buried on a infertile wildling, but will adorn and ennoble it. All this must do in their Spring so that they give good fruits in Summer, increasing little by little, & finally, multiplying to infinity by way of
admirable adaptation, of which Hermes Trismegistus mentions in the table
of emerald. Here, then, is amply declared this truly high science, and which
alone infinitely surpasses all those where ambition drives desirous souls
honors and riches of the world. So ending my talk about
the work of our Poet, I will say with him,

My luke little thing asks.
But his singing loves height:
Because better is a big thing,
That much of little value.

END.

PERMISSION,
It is allowed to Claude Morillon, to print this book, with defense in such
cases required. Done this fifteenth of March, one thousand six hundred and ten.

SAP.

Extract from the Privilege of the King.

By grace & Privilege of the King, it is permitted to Claude Morillon, Bookseller &
Printer of Lyon, print, or have printed, sell & distribute, a book
entitled, Commentaries by Henry de Linthaut, Sieur de Mont lion,
medical doctor; On the Treasure of the Treasures of Christofle de
Gamon, revised & enlarged by the Author .And this for the time & term of six
consecutive years: With prohibitions to all other Booksellers & Printers of the
Kingdom of France, of some Provinces that they are subjects of the King,
to print, have printed, sell, debit, hold & buy, nor exchange or
traffic in & out of the said Kingdom, none of the said books, nor the
increase or decrease, nor extracted from anything, without the knowledge & consent
said Morillon, to the applicable penalties & fines as well as more fully is
Contents of Her Majesty's Parent Letters. Data in Paris at me, from Mars
1610. And of his reign the twenty-first.

Finished printing 30. March 1610.