ELEMENTARY DICTIONARY
FOR THE USE OF YOUNG DISCIPLES OF HERMES

JP Joubert de la Salette

1754

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"Diana the Huntress"
Luc-Olivier Merson, 1878

- The first subject and the fire are essential in the work.

- From the preparation of the first subject results a humidity bright and luminous mercurial.

- There is a particular subject specific to the work.

- You have to take two things out of the subject and then bring them together through art.

- It is necessary to remove all the impurities from it to bring out the hidden things and to draw from chaos the sulfur and the mercury, which being reunited, make the mercury of the wise.

- This compost which is the mercury of the philosophers suffices, by means of the fire, to make gold. This one, returned in its chaos and left this same chaos, triumphs over any metallic impurity and can multiply to infinity.

- The first chaos or subject is composed of the blood of the dragon and the vegetal saturnia.

- The first chaos or subject is the compound of sages and contains the four elements.

- The first subject or compound is corporeal and spiritual.

- The first subject or chaos or compound is made of two, sulfur and mercury and of the three principles and the four elements which begin to be reconciled together.

- From the general chaos derive the particular ones of the three kingdoms. The mineral chaos that contains sulfur and mercury in the same subject is the artist's first material.

- The chaos of the sages is drawn from the same first subject or first matter according to the various operations of art, imitating nature and according to the provisions of the ordained seed of God.

- The first subject is the matter of art which consists of three substances by the ministry of Vulcan or fire.

- This first matter or hyle which is placed between the metal and the mineral is a chaos or a compound of fixed and volatile altogether, which the sages call hyle or the first water, which they draw and compose from the first natural and mineral hyle that nature had composed of the elements.

- This first matter or compound is made by the destruction of the body and the water (or second hylé) which is the soul, the spirit and the essence is made by the destruction of this first matter.

- We only need this water or soul for the beginning, the middle and the end of the work. This water is twice born of mercury.

- Our chaos, that is to say that which the sages derive from primitive chaos, is still called magnesia.

- Our chaos must be purified in our fire to draw from it the philosophical mercury clothed in the form of water, to penetrate, dissolve the earthly bodies and awaken the internal fire of nature, dormant in them.

- The mercury of the philosophers is enclosed and imprisoned in the chaos of the first mineral chaos that nature presents. He is drawn from it and set free by the help of art which comes to help nature and which begins where she ended. This in turn helps him as the spirits emerge from the slavery of the body and separate themselves from the coarse spirits of matter which remain useless at the bottom of the vessel.

- The mercury thus released from the places of its first coagulation contains a double nature, namely: an igneous and fixed which is interior to it, which is the fixed heart of all things, permanent in the fire and the true sulfur of the philosophers. The other moist and volatile which is prior to the preceding one, which is the purest and most subtle of all spirits, the quintessence of all the elements, the first matter of all metallic things and the true mercury of the sages.

- There are four kinds of mercury. The first is that of bodies, which is the precious seed from which the tincture of philosophers is made, mercury created by God. The second is the bath and the mercury of nature, the vase of the philosophers, the philosophical water, the sperm of the metals in the seed (where the seminal point resides). The third which is made of the two preceding ones is the mercury of the philosophers. The fourth is the secret fire, the medium substance of water.

- The ancient chaos created by God contained in confusion and at rest the seeds of all things and the opposites dwelt there in peace.

The metallic seeds included in our chaos are also at peace there and wait for the artist to say Fiât lux, separating light from darkness, reducing the metallic seed of power in action, making the invisible visible.

- The old chaos was everything and was nothing special. The metallic chaos produced by nature contains in itself all the metals and is not metal. Nature was starting a metal in him, but impeded in its course, it only gave you chaos.

- The sky and the earth of the philosophers are contained in confusion in this metallic chaos. He is an image of death and yet the Catholic land has a hidden life.
- The open mineral chaos, the separated elements, the purified elements come together in oil in the form of viscous water which is this chaos or philosophical compound, and the sun which must be nourished and washed comes out of the bosom of the sea. The sage marries the sky and the earth and unites the upper waters with the lower ones.

- From this chaos or philosophical compound which is our first matter, the sage draws from it a visible spirit, which nevertheless is incomprehensible, which is the root of life of the body and the mercury of the philosophers, whose liquor must be made material until it arrives at a degree of sovereign and perfect medicine.

- This body from which one draws a spirit which is gold water without corrosion, is formless and resembles chaos, a runt or a work of chance. The spirit it contains is in contemptible forms, so the ignorant are made to pay a low price for its matter, while the wise and learned esteem it only because they know its value.

- This unique being composed of two substances, the third of which is hidden, is the vessel of Hermes (the doves of Diana) where the air to be cooked is a medium between metal and mercury. It is the philosophical child, it is a single essence which accomplishes the great work by itself, with the aid of a graduated fire which is its nourishment.

- This child must first be purified of his phlegm and in oil brought back seven times to his mother who is the white moon. It must be washed, nourished and nursed with the milk of its own breasts and receive its increase and its strength by the imbibitions and be perfected by the flying eagles which are done by the sublimation and the addition of the true sulfur, which sharpened, comes out stronger from it by one degree at each sublimation.

- This sublimation does all the operations of the sages. It is the elevation or exaltation of substance from an abject state to a state of high perfection. We recognize in our mercury a movement of ascent in the first work, which is the preparation of the mercury, which constitutes all the difficulty. The rest is no more than child's play and the work of a woman.

- Sublimation is the elevation of a dry thing with adhesion to the vessel, by means of fire. The dry thing being our magnet which naturally attracts its vessel which is the wet, because the dry attracts the wet and the wet will temper the dry, unites with it by means of the dry which participates in the nature of both.

- As soon as Neptune has come out of the center of the sea, he calms all the winds and makes a general calm with his trident, that is to say that our stone or matter becomes triumphant in dryness.

- It is heaven and earth that marry on the bed of friendship and it is the royal palace; these are imbibitions. It is the mother who feeds her child and the child who feeds his mother helping each other to increase and multiply.

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