SPAGYRIC MEDICINE "Medicina Spagyrica" or "Spagyrische Artzney-Kunst"
Johann Pharamund Rhumelius
Frankfurt, J. Huttner, 1648
LAT notice
It should be noted that the translation of the German version into French made by Pierre Rabbe of the “Medicina Spagyrica” in 1932 is not complete. Nevertheless, the parts translated into French contain enough hermetic elements of the highest interest to justify their resumption in the Alchemical Mirror. I give an example of this by an excerpt put in bold in chapter VII of the "Golden Panacea", below, which resonates in harmonics with chapter II of "l'Oiseau d'Hermès", also below, and which refers us to, among others, Limojon de Saint-Didier and his various writings, in particular "The Letter of a Philosopher about the Writing (or Epistle) of Aristeas", where the Adept warns us of the importance of Air, as Rhumelius himself does…. Air that we breathe,
One will also note the resemblances which exist between the principles of spagyric medicine as they are described by Rhumelius, and the principles of homeopathy which were established by Samuel Hahnemann. This almost takes us off topic, but deserves a mention nonetheless.
Contents
1. HERMETIC COMPENDIUM
2. ANOTHER HERMETIC COMPENDIUM
3. CHEMICAL ANTIDOTE - Treaty IV. TRIPARTITE PHALAIA
4. Treaty VI. THE GOLDEN PANACEA
5. Treaty VII. THE BIRD OF HERMES
6. Treaty VIII. SONG OF SONGS OF SOLOMON
SPAGYRIC MEDICINE
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SPAGYRIC MEDICAL ART
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I. — A HERMETIC COMPENDIUM, where one learns to recognize diseases in general, their origin and the way to cure them.
II. — A CHEMICAL ANTIDOTE, where the preparation of chemical medicines is indicated.
III. — A CHYMIC THERAPEUTIC, where for the first time the treatment of different diseases is taught according to the spagyric method.
HERMETIC COMPENDIUM
( Except)
CHAPTER I
Of the true Medicine of the Ancients
and how it was found.
The true Medicine of our ancestors consists solely in the quintessence, and it was Hermes Trismegistus, who lived in the time of Moses, who was the first to discover and transmit it in his writings.
The art of Medicine lasted until there appearedmisochemistry, with its baseless theories, its great difficulties in overcoming its mixture withwitchcraft AndMagic, its belittlement by critics in bad faith and finally its disappearance in vain chatter.
Perhaps Satan, the enemy of the human race, had used all his skill and malice to deprive us of this help. Perhaps he wanted to prevent the greatness of the Eternal God from appearing, and to deprive him of the thanksgiving of men, at the same time as he deprived them of this natural and powerful Medicine.
CHAPTER II
From where should
true Medicine be drawn, and from the differences
which it includes.
True Medicine originates from the center of the earth. It comes only from God, who has shown it to us very clearly inthe Trinity. TEAAlmighty God, who is one God, yet consists of three divine persons; also, having made his creature in his image, he signed it with his signature, which is triple, so that through his creation his Law shines through.
This trinity appears to us, however, under the aspect of unity. By Hermès Trismegistus, it is described as “ certain and very true, without lying ” . Other philosophers call it: The three Principles of all things. These three principles are found in the three kingdoms: vegetable, animal and mineral. The hermetic doctors called them Mercury Sulfur and Salt, because they are also found in the resolution of each of these particular bodies
Although each species has its different principles, we find, in the vegetable kingdom, salt, oil and water; in the mineral kingdom, earth, sulfur and mercury; in the animal kingdom, body, soul and spirit.
It is on this philosophy thatMedicinehermetic, because each spirit aspires to unite with that which is most related to its own: “likes are cured by likes” .
In this differ the Hermetists and the Galenists. The Hermetists put forward the Three Principles, because they are the nearest elements of all things; and here Hermes appears to us nearer the truth than Galen, who is concerned, in illness, only with the impurity of the elements. But, the mixture of the three Principles being the true essence of the bodies, aided by them, nature itself rejects the impurities outside the bodies and restores health in them.
When, in the Microcosm, it is the salt which is affected, the salt acts ; if it is the sulfur or the mercury that is sick, then it is the sulfur or the mercury that heals them.
This is what I wanted to explain briefly, so that the blind open their eyes and can see whatthe PhilosophysicalHermeticMedicine, and that they are based on the foundation ofnatureuniversal; so, too, that they may discern how they differ fromMedicineregular. Knowing both, a true doctor will be able to heal byMedicine Hermeticizes the evils which appear incurable to the Galenists. Then the shameless lies of the latter, who claim that the "chemists" poison people, will be proven. Finally, when you have read and understood this little book, you will know that it isMedicinewhich is a lie and a poison, and you will agree with me that those whom I call "Chemists" are not those vulgar spoilers of water and mixtures, who go so far as to claim Paracelsus, while they are unaware of the first word ofHermeticMedicine ! It is not enough to carry a long knife to be a fine cook; so I will speak here only for those who want to study the Principles based on solid foundations, and who want to reach mastery in the Work by the experimental way.
CHAPTER III
Of the right knowledge and of the origin
of all diseases.
We are used to saying, in Medicine: Once the cause of the problem has been found, it is easier to find the remedy.
The doctor must therefore, above all, recognize the disease; he will then know how to cure it. The disappearance of the disease is visible; the beginning is obscure. The goal of the doctor is to make it disappear. It is in this that he will prove that he has the knowledge of the last matter.
In my little treatise On First Essences, I demonstrated to you that Salt, Sulfur and Mercury come, in the beginning, from the Four Elements, which issue from the four matrices of the same Nature; Andnatureitself has its origin in the Three Principles. From there come our diseases and all the disorders of our body. For the life of the body is not regulated only by the four Humors, but also by the three principles:
SALT SULFUR MERCURY
by the natural Stars of the Microcosm and by the Five Origins of Evil. Knowing this, the doctor will be able to recognize and detect all diseases. Only by this means will he come to know Heaven and its origin will be revealed to him.
The Planets pour out their rays and effects below, on the corporeal planets, in particular indications, according to whether man allows himself to be led by the sideric spirit or by the animal spirit. Thus the elements and the planets have their signature in man. When one of these signs or planets governs in the Macrocosm, it also governs the course of the Microcosm and attracts men to it as the earth attracts rain. Thus when we observe the reign of an opposite planet and the weather deteriorates, becomes bad in the sky, man immediately feels uneasiness and melancholy, as a result of the harmony between the Macrocosm and the Micro cosm . It follows that to the origin and to the periods of growth of each planet, corresponds, in the human body,
But when man lives by the example of God, the stars no longer govern him; on the contrary, it is he who dominates them, according to the ancient adage: The stars govern the body, but the free spirit governs the stars.
A physician, therefore, must observe not only complexions and moods, but rather the planets of the Microcosm, and also how the potency and effects of remedies may be discovered from the signature of their planets; because the stars are not only in the Big World but also in the small one, that is to say in the Man who has in him all the minerals of the Big World, and is called for that: Small World.
Before therefore being able to classify diseases, we must recognize all the minerals of the human body, and know that the Microcosm draws its Medicine from the Great World. So many planets in the sky, so many minerals in the earth; each planets its influence, by spiritual exert means, and there are as many minerals or planets in man as in the earth (for man is an extraction and a quintessence of the earth).
Therefore, when a doctor knows what is the Saltpetre of the Large World and that of the Small World, he also knows which cure to apply. When a case of chancre appears to him, he must know that in the same place there is arsenic, because chancre is called arsenic disease. Another evil is called martial, another lunar, and so on. The doctor should know that. As soon as he knows it, evil teaches him the remedy. Thus Arsenic cures Arsenic, Scorpion, Scorpion, and Mars, Mars, that is to say all martial diseases. For every creature of Almighty God is created by him from the Three Principles (like UP).From these three principles come all things, and when any one of these principles is out of balance, there soon follows corruption, decline, or disease of a limb, the natural origin, when the evil comes naturally from the rupture of balance of SALT , SULFUR or MERCURY, by the effect of the particular sky of the man, or astral body.
The second origin of diseases is the Astral origin, which comes from the influences of the planets of the Great World.
The third is the poisonous origin, when a disease comes from the poison or the impurity which is in the food or the drink, impurity also called Tartar.
The fourth is Spiritual origin, when it iswitchcraftor the spirit of one man that caused disease in another.
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The fifth is Divine origin, when man becomes susceptible to disease by decree of Almighty God.
These, then, are the five origins of all evils, and he who ignores their treatment and their cure cannot call himself the Perfect Physician.
Experience and trial must be the true masters; and this is so seldom taken into account that many unfortunate patients have been abandoned by the doctors, because the latter had not been able to recognize the true origin of the disease and to apply a well-founded treatment to it.
CHAPTER IV
Of the True Cure and the Cure
of Diseases in General.
When Almighty God had created all things, He ultimately created Man from the slime of the earth. The silt of the earth is the fifth creature,the quintessenceof the world, an extraction and an ultimate result of all natures. From this extraction man was made. It follows that there is in man a synthesis of all creatures. It must therefore use what it was made with; the very thing with which he was made must cure him of his evil and keep him healthy.
It follows that all diseases that appear in man must be dispelled by force, because evil can only be fought by force. True Medicine is a power that vanquishes all disease, just as fire melts and devours all metals. We must therefore seekMedicine where is the force which must act against the evil.
Since man is the Microcosm, the Great World must preserve him, nourish him and heal him. If the fruits of the earth of the Microcosm become sick, then the fruits of the earth of the Macrocosm must come to its aid. If an illness occurs in the Fire, Air or Water element of the Microcosm, these same elements of the Macrocosm must also come to its aid. Always like must help like.
All diseases arising from the Three Principles and the Four Elements, they will therefore be cured by the fifth essence of these three principles and these four elements; and this in any limb.
The quintessenceGold serves for the heart; that of Money for the Brain; that of copper for the kidneys; that of Lead for the spleen; that of Quicksilver for the lungs; that of iron for bile; that of Tin for the liver; because these seven parts need, in their illnesses, mineral medicines, the vegetables being too weak.
There are as many kinds of remedies in the three kingdoms as there are parts to heal in the body, as can be seen in my Harmonia Mundi. Also, every physician should have the Herbarium Spirituale siderum and learn there to recognize signatures in the light of nature. He must know which stones, plants, animals receive the influx from Saturn, Mars, Mercury or any other planet, and to which part, bile, lung, spleen, etc., they can be beneficial. Because each planet has its own quality and influence of nature, which it pours, by its rays, on the lower world, on animals, plants and minerals, where they imprint themselves.The things and even the elements thus signed by the planets have the force and the virtue of the planets to which they are connected and subject.
Animals have a more powerful life than vegetables, and minerals are of a more fixed and hard nature than the beings of the first two kingdoms; also vegetables are suitable for the lesser illnesses, animals for the strongest and most serious, and minerals for the most violent and inveterate, particularly in chronic illnesses. The effect that could not be achieved with plants and animals, will be obtained with minerals if they have been well prepared and, by spagyric art, rid of their impurities and venoms.
The medicines thus prepared and absorbed but spiritualized in a quintessence, penetrate into the body, immediately join the form which is similar to them, like a form and its image in a mirror. For example. if it is a medicine that has the signature of the heart, it goes to the heart; if it has the signature of the feet, it goes to the feet; the signature of the hands, to the hands; likewise to the head, stomach, back, liver, kidneys, and all other limbs; since each sidereal (astral) limb when the drug is absorbed by man, seeks the corresponding physical limb.
The Semen Santonici heals stone and taste, because its signature is reminiscent of sand; so it places itself where its form appears. The body being the image of the mind, each drug is a true mystery. So, first of all, we must look for these analogies between medicine and evil. In this lies the foundation of all cure, and not in complicated ordinances and correctionibus per additiones, for all things are by nature best figured in spiritual form. This, no doctor, no composition or correction can do better than nature. You just have to usechemistry, which separates from the poison the lily and the medicinal gold, the subtle from the thick, and, from the earthly body, the balm, the true and pure essence. Then we can make for ourselves in the Art of Medicine a real reputation as a famous Doctor.
CHAPTER V
How to cure diseases, and medicines.
We mentioned, in the previous chapter, the five origins of diseases, according to the Three Principles.
These are:
1° The Divine cause, that is to say the wrath of God and the punishment of our sins;
2. The Astral cause, which, by means of the planets, darkness and other fatal influences, causes diseases of the body;
3° The Spiritual cause which, to him who does not pray assiduously, sends, by means ofwitchcraftor by some other influence of an alien spirit, serious evils, by God's leave;
4. The poisonous cause, which acts in the body of man through food and drink;
5° The Natural cause, when the body is injured in one or the other of its three principles, either by a weakness of constitution inherited from the parents, or by excesses which have weakened the body and its radical humidity .
These are the five origins of all disease.
There are, therefore, five ways of curing them.
Let the doctor know first where the disease originated . Is it spoiled food or drink? Then it is necessary to treat by the Arcana, that is to say by appropriate plants, if the evil comes from a plant; by minerals, if it comes from a mineral. If it is the influence of the stars, neither mineral nor vegetable will be of any help, but it will be necessary to have recourse to Astrology and to the particular influence of the sky. If the evil came by sorcery, magic possession, bewitchment, it will be necessary to use magic. Finally, when it is the Almighty God who holds in his hands the end of sickness and health, and does not heal the sick, no doctor, no medicine, neither drinking gold, northe quintessence, nor Astrology, norMagic, nor evenstonePhilosophers will avail nothing, but only true penance, regenerated life, and the grace of God.
In my Universal Treatise on the Macrocosm and the Microcosm I have sufficiently indicated the origin and cure of illnesses:
1° Those of divine origin are cured by the Christian faith
2° Those of natural origin, by the natural method, according to experience
drawn from the specific form and signature of things
3. Those of poisonous origin, by the Baume de Mumie;
4 ° Those of astral origin, by Astrology;
5° Those of spiritual origin, forMagic.
Now it is necessary to know that all creatures come from one and only matter. This matter of all things is the Great Mystery.
This great Mystery isthe mother of all the elements, stones, plant animals; in shortsthe motherand the origin of all things created by the Supreme Artist.
We read inthe genesis (chapter I) how the water parted from the earth, and how man, the last, was formed and created fromEarthwhere there is only SALT, SULFUR and MERCURY; and in these three things rests a man's health as well as his disease, and not in the Four Humors, as has been said. It is necessary to understand what the SALT , SULFUR and MERCURY of the Small World are, like those of the Big World, and to recognize when they are good or bad, healthy or altered.
But Man has his first matter in his Limbo or Chaos. The SALT , SULFUR and MERCURY of this Chaos were those of the Elements, which were extracted from it, then reunited in man. So the doctor should know that all diseases are in the first three substances and not in the four elements. The virtues which are in the four elements do not concernMedicine; they are only, in their relations with the four humors, the matrices in which the three principles are contained.
The cure of diseases can be effected in two ways: Universally and Particularly.
The Universal cure is that where the Balm of Nature, native or implanted, heals and comforts in such a way that it expels all the impurity of the disease from the root; for this balm agrees so well with human nature that it resolves, by its resemblance, the very seed of inveterate impurity. In this case, the radical moisture is retained in full force and no disease can reach the body.
But in the particular cure, the seed, tincture, or root of disease cannot be removed, but only the symptoms and pains abated; it is then necessary to support and comfort nature, at the same time as one will employ the drugs whose signature relates exactly to the affected parts of the body.
CHAPTER VI
Universal Medicine
and its preparation
The species of disease are as numerous as the species of elementary creatures, which exist in the thousands; as the Scientist cannot know them all and apply the corresponding cure to them, many patients are exposed to perish; then God, in his clemency, revealed to man certain universal secrets of nature, which contain, some, the nature of all heaven, others, the nature of all earth; others, from all the air; some which have the nature of all vegetables, or of all animals, or of all metals, or of all minerals. They have its virtues and by them they can easily find the way to illnesses and cure them. Because each element, immediately absorbed, is attracted towards its particular magnet and is united to it.
But, in addition to this, the generous Father has given humanity a thing of the highest price, a remedy, the most universal of all, which contains the virtue, not only of one element, but of all, and which is a quintessence of all the machine of the world. There is nothing nearer and more akin to the human body; when he receives this remedy he absorbs the quintessence of the whole new regenerated world, which renews the little world by bringing it the true "temperament", for men themselves were formed from it in the beginning . This is why this admirable medicine has been called by the Philosophers: Universal Tincture, and also: Philosopher's Goldstone .
You must also know that there is a magic stone to be found in the chaos of the Microcosm, which has in it all the essences of nature, like the aura stone. The only difference between them concerns the transmutation.
The Microcosm being created from the four elements and in their image, it follows that once resolved in its first matter, this one has in it four elements of equal weight. From this chaos emerges a new world which can unite with all natures , becausethe Great Natureand the essence of the Great World is included in it, though hidden.
However, this Animal Stone exerts its action only in the diseases of the body, which it can cure and keep in perfect health until the end assigned by the Creator, as it must be understood also to a certain extent for the vegetable stone.
But it's inPierre Auréethat hides all the treasure of nature and it is in the magnet of gold that the greatest virtue is found, the knowledge of which is a gift from heaven. Its preparation is spiritual, but its subject is earthly, and it is the most powerful center from which any circle must arise. There lies the true sperm, and the true Mercury of the Philosophers.
It is a real matter, exposed to all eyes and yet known to few; it is found everywhere and is despised as worthless. Everyone touches it with their hands; it is only a round ball which contains the Ocean or the great Sea, and in the center of which is hidden the true little bird of Hermes, formed by the sidereal body through the elements and the earth. It is a known matter and the true Mother of all minerals and metals; and it is from this matter and Mother that man was drawn, that he was born, and by her that he was received and made alive.
We will not reveal it further; rather, it is up to each physician to seek out these mysteries in the great Book ofwisdom, which comes from the Divine Spirit, that is, in the center of Nature. He will find there the basis and the knowledge of all things; and by an austere life, a humble prayer, he will receive the gift, as Christ taught us: Work to obtain the Kingdom of God; everything else will be given to you in addition.
CHAPTER VII
Of the particular way,
and how diseases can be cured
by specific ones.
Particular cures, like the universal, must be sought in the depths of nature. First you have to know which substance is best suited to the human body. SALT , SULFUR, and MERCURY hidden in metals and minerals being communicable to man, when the like finds its like, unexpected cures result. The physician must be guided by the signature of things. Nature puts on each creature the sign of what it is good for, and indicates, in its holy language, the forces and virtues of things, by their names and the mystical letters which are hidden there . When we want to know what a thing is good for, it must be recognized by its signs and its name. Thus all the forces which are in natural things will be recognized by their signature, just as a red beard and a black beard are the index of the nature of a man, for it is said: One recognizes the bird by its feathers.
The physiognomy of natural things must therefore be thoroughly studied and understood, for nature allows nothing to come out of it which does not reveal what it contains. We see a striking example of this in the man whose qualities of heart, good or bad, are clearly seen in his countenance; there is nothing so hidden in man that does not have its visible sign upon him.
He therefore who wants to be a true Philosopher, must not stick to the theories, works and descriptions of others, but must sound out the depths of nature for himself and draw his light from it.
CHAPTER VIII
Of the best medicines
that the physician should employ.
Nothing has been created by the Almighty that does not have its use and is not for a good; and yet it is necessary to know how to discern what is endowed with the highest properties and virtues. A man can surpass another in intelligence and wisdom; it is the same between two substances, although a good medicine may be found in everything.
Man's life is too short for him to experience all the forces of matter; so Damascenus, a Father of the Church, says to us: Only he will be great and considered wise and wise who will not stop at quantity but at quality and utility; and a good physician must stick to a small quantity of medicines, chiefly those whose virtue and potency he has experienced.
So there are not many complicated recipes and prescriptions; and, in pharmacies, none of these masses of boxes and vials; but the bonum et modicum suffices. It is useless to seek doctors in India, Asia and Africa; for the goddess Fortune buried her treasure and her power very deep in the earth; and that is why they are held, through ignorance, to be contemptible and worthless.
The first and most powerful medicine isstoneto philosophize; being universal, it dissipates all evils, but as its preparation is very slow and lasts more than a year, and its matter hides in the shadows, it is not necessary to prepare it when one begins.
After come the three Magic Stones: the animal stone, the vegetable stone and the mineral stone; then the elixir of life, the tincture of the Microcosm, as well as the tincture and the spirit of the seven main organs: the tincture of the Sun for the heart, the tincture ofthe moonfor the brain, the tinctures of Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury, each for its appropriate organ.
Then come the quintessence of the pearls, the tincture of coral, my Phalaia and my Asa, and other specific medicines indicated in my Synoptic Table, which were all, in the beginning, generated in the same matrix and must be dissolved and prepared by the same period.
I won't talk about the common medicines, syrups, pastes and powders that clutter the pharmacies of pharmacists; it is their job to make them, and it is that of the true doctor to seek the health of his patients in the three magic stones.
CHAPTER IX
Of the just and true preparation
of medicines.
The art of medicine comprises two parts: diagnosis, to recognize the disease and its origin; and the remedy to overcome it; the latter being obtained only by a profound knowledge of the virtues of substances, and an impeccable preparation, for the virtue of things is hidden deeply.
All sublunary things are dual in nature: perfectly good and perfectly bad, for there is no grain without a speck, no flour without bran, no almond without a shell ; also it is always necessary to purge of their impurities the animal, vegetable or mineral substances, which are still poisonous, because their mercurial matter is still raw and not fixed. Before she has been brought into a fixed state, man's stomach is far too weak to accept and absorb her, But prepared and fixed, she seeks evil and acts upon it at her will. roots and expels it radically. Ordinary purgative medicines cannot do this. suddenly a street without cutting into the land that constitutes it.
Fixed medicine, on the contrary, does not produce stools, but manifests itself by sweat reaction, for example, by seeking the center and core of the disease and attacking the root; so there is no need for complicated prescriptions with "additionibus", but for the simple indication of a medicine prepared by the spagyric art, which will act with a volcanic force. Of course, this is not the business of the theoretician, who has science in his mouth, but of the serious naturalist and true physicist, who knows how to recognize all substances and knows what arsenic and poison are; and who knows how to extract the lily from the pearls, which I have conscientiously stated in this little treatise, but in such a wayhowever that only the artist and the philosopher can hear it, and not the sophists and the charlatans, who must be unaware of everything, having learned nothing.
CHAPTER X
On the difference between medicines
and the materials from which they must be obtained.
As there are great differences between men, one being more pious and the other better or more chaste, so there are between things; for example, between wines, where one is more fragrant or better or stronger than another; likewise the spirits which are distilled from it, and which are more powerful or more fortifying than the others, although one draws a spirit from all the wines.
In all things, it is necessary to make a selection and especially in medicine; it is necessary to employ and choose the most powerful and the best species. They are unfortunately often falsified, as can be seen in the oils; and in balsamic spirits, which are sometimes so adulterated that a chemist can hardly recognize them.
Take for example the spirit of vitriol, which is widely used today. Its virtues can only truly be found in the vitriol of Cyprus or that of Hungary; yet the apothecaries are satisfied with a common vitriol, which costs half as much as the other and has, so to speak, no virtues; and so for all the other products: they do not keep and are, after a short time, nothing more than a phlegm without properties, and unusable .
CHAPTER XI
The right time to pick
medicinal species.
Everything has its time. The grape must be picked in autumn, the wheat must be cut and garnered in summer; before, it would be too early, and after, it would be too ripe. For all things that are under the sun, whether vegetable, animal or mineral, there is a spring when they bloom, a summer when they are ripe and a winter when they rest.
Let us therefore observe the seasons of each species. During the time of their balsamic influence, they escape corruption and the worms do not set themselves there, because the balsamic influence is in harmony with the three principles.
The wormwood seed, harvested at the time of its balsamic exaltation, heals the stone and dispels the pains, which does not happen if it is harvested at another time.
Chicory , in its autumn and at its highest balsamic exaltation, immediately stops the hemorrhages, and, at another time, produces the opposite effect.
St. John's wort drives out all worms from the body when picked in due time, but not otherwise.
Each plant must therefore be picked at the moment of its balsamic influence and in the very place where nature makes it grow.
Each medicine, however well prepared it may be, must be prepared with plants picked in their time, otherwise they are only bodies without a soul.
The Physician must therefore be, first of all, an astronomer, and seek out the virtues revealed by Astronomy. He must know how to tell the difference between plants that are good for youth and those that are good for old age; some will be picked during the waxing moon and others during the waning moon; the first will be called male and the others female; and, every creation having two numbers, the two being united, it will make a whole. And the more the plants are freshly picked and young, the more virtues they have, because, as they age, they lose their strength and their qualities. And since it is easier to cure a recent disease than an old one, young plantsshould be used for an old or chronic ailment, and old plants may suffice for recent illnesses, for if old is applied to old, one blind man leads the other, and both will fall into a hole. This is the reason why many remedies do not work or remain in the body and, instead of driving out the evil, increase it.
The physician must therefore know what medicine to employ in order to overcome evil; if it is stronger than the disease, the latter will be rejected or will be extinguished as the fire is extinguished; whereas if the disease is the strongest it will change the remedy into poison.
CHAPTERS XII AND XIII
compound drugs.
How to prepare them and what is
their effect.
Just as wheat, and all grain in general, is of no use to man unless he takes off the husks and the bran and grinds it into flour; likewise, medicinal materials are of no use to the human body unless the impurities have been separated from them and the pure part prepared and cooked into a medicine. When the first preparation of any medicine has been made, the quintessence is extracted from it and the medicinal gold is drawn from it, that is to say, the pure is separated from the impure, the bad from the good, and the body spirit.For in all natural things the good and the bad are mixed; there is no rose without a thorn, a tree without bark, a kernel without a shell, and no medicinal species without poison. So we must remove it and consider only the lily and the quintessence, which are the pure and the fire of all things and which destroy diseases as fire consumes wood.
It will be removed from all plants from which impurities have first been separated, and in general from all the elements, because in it alone resides the strength, virtue and medicine of nature. It is the sperm and elixir of Gold; it is also the color and the life, the tincture and the radical humidity, the balm and the fifth being extracted from all things; it forms the Spirit of life, without foreign addition.
True medicine, therefore, must be drawn from a natural and corporeal body, and changed into a better, spiritual nature, into a pure essence, so that the spirit, bound to the body at its birth , may be loosed and may act and penetrate with real spiritual fire, for before his release he cannot act with utility and power.
Now, therefore, when the spiritual and eternal essence is separated from the natural and mortal body, it can quickly penetrate and act, like balsamic medicine. In short, in all natural things, only what is supernatural acts; the rest must be abandoned as a dead body; the quintessence of gold,the Pearland coral is found there in infinitely small quantities. Those who claim to administer the body and the complete substance , even ground on marble, subtly and with alcohol, are quite mistaken; the stomach cannot digest it and receives only harm from it. Many doctors have tried it, and wrongly so.
CHAPTER XIV
Continuation of the previous chapter.
We pointed out in the previous chapter that the mind alone can fight disease, not the whole body. It is therefore necessary to operate a spagyric anatomy, to separate the nucleus from its shell, the pure from the impure, the salutary mumia from the poison which accompanies it. These preparations can be universal or particular.
The universal is the preparation of the universal menstruation or Eau des Sages. Once the impurities have been separated from it, it dissolves all the things that are joined to it and allowed to stay in it for a while. But as this water is the great secret of nature, and since it has always been kept carefully hidden by the Philosophers, I am not permitted to reveal anything more about it here.
Individuals are numerous. These are the vegetable, animal and mineral menses, which always act according to their particular properties and virtues. But I tell you, in my own experience, that no preparation is better or fairer than that made by means of one's own mind and one's own radical moist , which resolves its own body, extracts it and separates it from the venom by: Digestion, Calcination, Sublimation, Coagulation and Fixation. It brings, by destruction of matter, the separation and purification of the three principles, re-joins them again, gives them a new birth. Modern doctors , having studied nothing, know absolutely nothing about it.Ignoring everything, they affect Despise everything, so that their authority is not in turn despised. These Misochimists, out of jealousy, decry our medicine, pointing it out, out of deceit, as a poison, whereas they are the ones who give the patient the shell instead of the almond, the bran instead of the flour, and the terrestrial faeces . and impure as pure essence!
CHAPTER XV
How one must prepare
the Universal Medicines
and solve them by the water of the sages.
If the little grain of wheat is not thrown into the ground and does not putrefy there, it does not bear fruit. Because it is in the bottom of the earth that the spirit is andthe Living Fountain.She is the receptacle of all celestial rays and influences, a universal Mother and root of all other elements. It has within it the seed of the life-giving force of all things. This is why it is called animal, vegetable and mineral; it is fertilized with the three elements, and from its fruits all things are born and nourished. She is a center and a foundation in which remainsthe First Matter of all. She is called the Bride and Heaven, because it is the heavenly Father who, by his heavenly virtues, fertilizes her. Also it produces all kinds of animals and vegetable and mineral fruits, and this is the greatest secret.
When these fruits are purged, by the art of Vulcan, of their impurities, then our first matter appears as the means of our creation, and the true Medicine, as resurrection.
Not only the microcosm, but also all the elements bear fruit in the new life, and are endowed with far greater forces than before. Thus we see that cinnamon, roses, and other vegetables, when still alive, certainly smell good, but their virtue is small; and when they are killed, that is to say putrefied, dissolved, calcined and distilled, to separate from them the three principles Water, Oil and Salt, then one notes with what power and virtue they behave in the human body.
They have even more strength when the elements are brought together and pushed into new life. All medicinal species must therefore be anatomized, extracted, separated and brought to new life, that is, to quintessence and tincture.
Putrefaction is the highest point where living species rot and die and come alive again. He is not an ordinary doctor who can undertake this work; but a well-informed practitioner and chemist, who will know how to direct his medicines towards a certain goal, as did Hermes, Pythagoras and Raymond Lully, as well as Hippocrates and Galen, when they composed their theriac and their antidote. Then he will obtain valuable medicine, by which the patients will not be disappointed.
CHAPTER XVI
Of the preparation of Medicines
and of the particular way
to be followed.
Reason makes it clear and experience demonstrates, and the peasants know well too , that wine and beer, pure and stripped of their tartar and lees, are healthier than the others. Why then not admit that the drug, purged of its coarse faeces and its earthly barks, is much more active and better tolerated by the stomach? We see it well in the simple ones: a small parcel of cinnamon balm acts more than if one gave to the patient to eat a whole pound of the plant; and that, by virtue of the spiritual essence of the medicine.
It was Paracelsus who found that this power resides in Water and that it is a mother of all metals. From water, which is the root and foundation of all things, were created the four elements, in heaven and on earth, as we read in the genesis(Ch. 1). It is therefore necessary to recognize the true Water, which is the Azoth, and the particular menstruation, the radical humidity or first humidity to which in the beginning everything is linked, so that it can resolve itself there naturally and untie itself there. .
But whoever wants to know and submit to this water must know that it will take a lot of work and experience (and not just reading or hearing about it), doing and repeating the work two or three times, and even five or six times in a row, because it takes time, which an inexperienced person cannot understand.
Here, finally, is the summary of this chapter: without the spirit of the Universal Mercury which is the true and unique key to make things spiritual, no metal or mineral can be resolved or made drinkable, as elucidation will teach us. .
CHAPTER XVII
From the Gold of the Philosophers.
What it is.
It is no small battle among Physicians to know from what material the Elixir of Life is drawn. We conclude, however, that it is only in gold, and not elsewhere, that we must findMedicine, because it is in gold alone that the spirit ofnature, to dissipate all weakness and bring about all healing. And on that, all the Philosophers agree. But we find inphilosophy _of the Adepts and in the Treasury of Nature, that there are many kinds of gold in natural things.
The first, Astral; the second, Mineral, the third, Metallic, and the fourth, Elemental.
The first is called Astral, because it still lies in the first being and is still imperfect . Brother Basile Valentin calls it Astral Sun, because the stars still have their influences and first operations there. From this spiritual matter, he says, from which gold was born in the beginning, it is possible to make potable gold, much more perfect and better than that which would be obtained with the finished gold, which must first be make it spiritual before making it drinkable gold. Theophrastus Paracelsus calls it Electrum immaturum, and First composition of the Sun, because, precisely, nature operates its first compositions there.Some also call it immature gold, or potential gold. Aureum Vellus names it: First being of the Sun, saying: Gold and Silver are useless, if it is not a question of the first being. Theophrastus, in his little book On the First Beings , tells how it can be obtained, and, in his Archidoxes, clearly reveals how it must be prepared in order to be able to use it.
peat Philosophers call it the Green Lion, because it is still green, immature and imperfect. Hermes and other philosophers call it Black Earth, Artotic Eagle, Saturn, Plombagine, Racine du soleil; and that, not only because of its weight, but because nature, in gestation from the sun and the moon, formed a leaden mass. But what the Montagnards call it, it cannot be revealed, because of the curious unworthy who might abuse it.
The mineral gold is that which is still buried in the gangue of the mine, before the shiny metal, by fusion, appears.
Elemental gold is so named although it is not gold according to the vulgar species. It is separated by the Spagyric Art, and it is from it that the quintessence of medical gold is drawn. The closed door of the four elements opens and they then give their hidden qualities, SALT, SULFUR and MERCURY, separately and differentiated. A skilled and experienced chemist will know how to obtain them easily by his manual operations.
To end this chapter, we will say that the best raw material one can choose is Astral Gold, or the first being of gold. According to the testimony and experience of all Philosophers, it is the most useful and even the only one that can be chosen for work.
CHAPTER XVIII AND XIX
How one must prepare Gold, Silver
and other metals and extract
the quintessence from them.
When the Ancients noticed, and, by experience, were able to assure themselves that the most powerful comforting faculties of the heart rested in gold and silver, they applied themselves to drawing from them the principles to adapt them to their medicine. But as they are used today they can be of no use to man, since no metal can act in the body unless it has first been made drinkable and spiritual, so that the stomach can digest it. It is therefore necessary that they be destroyed by the true spagyric art, and that the essential medicinal virtue be withdrawn from them and made drinkable, and this without the means of any corrosive.but, that everyone cannot understand it as easily as the recipe for apple pie, that is understandable and also that the art is not within everyone's reach, but must be practiced by the sweat of one's brow in great devotion and humility. Not everything can be learned by reading the Masters; fervent prayer is required and also the courage to put one's hand to the coal, as I myself did in my time. Pigeons do not fall roasted into the beaks of those who remain seated behind the stove. You have to take a lot of trouble, travel, wander here and there, sometimes at great cost and even in danger to life. Anyway, I will repeat my explanations once again, for one who is a zealous student of HermeticMedicine.
Take living water Zoybeth, 6 parts, and gold refined by antimony, 1 part. Make an amalgam of it and sublimate it with fire until the fire has reduced it to impalpable powder. We must put this alcohol in a vial and pour over it the vegetable Struthion , that is to say, the distilled vinegar, exceeding it by three fingers.Cap tightly and set over medium heat. Then the spirit begins to extract gold and turns dark red. When the vinegar is sufficiently colored, it is separated and replaced by another; the process is repeated until there is nothing more to extract. We then mix all the solutions and put them in a water bath, to be distilled. When all the vinegar has been extracted, there remains at the bottom the essence of gold, which can no longer be changed into another body. This essence must be sweetened and distilled by retort to obtain a drinkable spirit. This is the moist radical and true vinegar of gold of which you must take 10 parts, and of the gold lime subtly prepared, 1 part;you will put them in a hermetically stoppered vial, to be digested over a low flame, then filter through paper. Then the potable gold is finished, and by great mystery it can purge, renew, and restore the human body. It is the quintessence of the gold of the Archidoxes of Paracelsus.
To sum up, we must, to begin with, prepare the gold in the state of impalpable and volatile lime; then, this volatile lime being dissolved in the Struthion, conjoin them as it is said until they are both spiritualized.
All metals must be prepared in this way and brought to volatility so that they can no longer be reduced to metal, because in the state of metal they can be of no use to the body. Thus one will prepare potable silver, potable iron, potable copper, potable tin and potable lead, with the help of vegetable menstruation and their own moist . To end this chapter, and out of pure Christian charity, I will reveal and communicate this: That the true Potable Gold is found in one and only thing, despised and well known; and he who knows this golden root well and considers the true andunique material, has no need to work on the common gold, so expensive, to destroy and spiritualize it, because it will find this same essence, and in much greater quantity, in the magnet of gold. Because gold and all minerals are attracted by their first matter, in order to return to their first birth. This material is the true spirit of SALT , SULFUR and MERCURY united in one body.
The Red Lion and the King are gold and silver; the dragon and the eagle are the man and the woman, who will be able to dye vulgar gold and perfect it, until making it a medicine more powerful than any other. (This improvement is placed under the sign ofthe planetor Apple of paradise, and finds itself sealed first in its star or first being.) We must be grateful now and always humblethe high societyand Mighty Divinity.
CHAPTER XX
How one should prepare
the quintessence
of Pearls and Precious Stones.
In the preparation of pearls and other precious stones, the mistake is generally made of grinding them in a bronze mortar or on a marble, to render the powder subtle to the tongue. But as the marble is much softer than the stones, the latter wear out the marble and incorporate some of it, which the apothecaries do not care about. Anyone who wants to be sure of this with his own eyes has only to take a look at the marbles and mortars that are used for this purpose and ask himself if the absorption of bronze and marble can help healing. illnesses? My conscience compels me to make this remark. These preparations cannot have virtual; you can immediately assure yourself of this by treating them with water.strong, which immediately drops the crushed materials to the bottom of the container. And how could the patient digest such matters, which neither fire nor corrosives can dissolve, when his stomach sometimes has trouble concocting tender and pure flour!
But, if the pearls and precious stones are prepared in such a way that they dissolve in a particular water, without leaving any dregs at the bottom, — as all essence and true medicine must do, — then the effect and the virtue will be powerful .
Here is the secret of their preparation:
Take pearls, corals or other precious stones, and proceed with the universal menstruation, as it is said in the Elucidary and, when the said matters are reduced to their first matter by the menstruation, they can, by continual digestion, be brought to the degree of the highest Arcanum.
In particular: take balsamic nature spirit,8 pounds, and oriental pearls2 books; put them in a glass retort and leave them in hot ashes for a day.
Then draw off the spirit and pour into another. Renew the operation until you can't extract anything anymore. The faeces are then thrown away and the liquor is filtered through the paper and then distilled rainwater and mountain vinegar are poured over it;we then see the pearls settle at the bottom, subtly and in the color of snow. It is then necessary to separate from it by retorting the essential spirit. Thus the body finds itself resolved, extracted and reduced to raw material. So the magisterium is over. Very few medicines can be compared to it; it yields very little to drink gold. It is used against contractures, dangerous cramps, delirium. It strengthens the brain, the heart, gives a good memory, cures apoplexy, dizziness, vertigo, dissolves the stone and acts singularly in epilepsy, gout, heart palpitations. It is also the best preservative against paralysis. It fortifies the Humid Radical, stops all outflows, renews and multiplies the Serumof Life, increases sperm, gives milk to women, serves against impotence, lifts down broken bodies, strengthens all vital spirits, cures all internal ailments and keeps the body healthy.
One administers 10 to 20 drops in a generous wine or in some medicine appropriate to the disease.
CHAPTER XXI
How true
coral essence and tincture should be prepared.
True coral dye is sought by many and found by few. Some have claimed to have made it using distilled vinegar and spirit of wine; but this is only a sinister lie or a mere imagination. I know from my own experience that it is impossible. The tincture of corals can become an excellent universal remedy, when it is prepared by our pontic water; but whoever does not know this water can use the particular way, in the following way:
Pulverize beautiful bright red corals, as much as you want, and pour the Great Circulated over them so that it protrudes three fingers. Put the preparation in a well-stoppered retort on hot ashes, where you will see it grow like small trees. When everything is dissolved, the faces are separated by paper; distilled rainwater is poured over it, all the menstruation is brought out, which must be watered down and then resolved another time with dew from the sky. The dew of the sky extracted, the rest must be treated by the retort. First comes a white spirit (which extracts its own blood-red body). At the end come the drops of pink color which are the true essence of corals. This dye,though in very small quantity,possesses At this time it has the power to renew and purify the flowering of the whole human body. It removes in a short time the weaknesses resulting from vitiated and corrupted blood and restores health to the body. It regulates and moderates the menses of women, stops bleeding, strengthens the heart and the spirit of life; preserves from all poison, comforts the stomach, opens the kidneys, the liver and the clogged lungs; serves against stones, dropsy, cramps, paralysis; dispel melancholy, ghosts, ghosts ,oppression, sadness, excellently helps fat and childbearing women and fights against all hysterical ailments. Its effect is solar. It is a marvelous preservative of epidemic and plague.
The dose is 10 , 12 , up to 20 drops in good old wine added to the specific medicine ofillness.
CHAPTER XXII
How one should prepare
the Vegetable Stone
and how to use it usefully.
Take the best Rhine wine: leave it stoppered for a month, in the heat of putrefaction then distill it in a bain-marie, until the spirit has completely passed and separated from its phlegm, for that, distill -it up to 7 times. It should burn like real fire. Then put it to circulate in a glass whose orifice is well sealed, and leave it for a month in slow digestion. This done, one must for 3 fingers of this spirit over one's own salt, obtained by sublimating the purest tartar, clarified and crystallized to the highest degree. Place the tightly stoppered flask in a bain-marie. A beautiful blood-red oil will come out. We will separate it from its spirit and coagulate it into a transparent red stone. Its use is marvelous in any mercurial disease.
The dose is 6 to 10 and 12 grains.
CHAPTER XXIII
Ofthe Animal Stone.How it should
be prepared and the judicious use
that should be made of it.
Take from our sea water. It must be healthy and clean. Take 40 measures (litres). Leave it for a whole month in the dark heat so that it can properly putrefy. The longer it stays like this, the more spirit it will give. Then distill it in sand, it will come out of it a strong spirit like fire. This spirit, we must rectify it and pour it back on the black mass which remains then, by degrees, distill it. Then he will mount a beautiful crystalline salt in the capital. Rectify it and preserve the good lest it fly away. Calcine the remaining body until it turns brown; then draw from it the fixed white salt with its phlegm.You will distill from this same salt a spirit in which you will have to drop by drop the first volatile spirit that is resolved in water, which will cause it to roar loudly; then you will squeeze out the phlegm, gently, in a bain-marie. There will then remain at the bottom of the vessel a white gum, which you will enclose in the egg of the Philosophers, and you will cook it in a vaporous bath until it congeals into a transparent ruby-colored stone. This one, at the dose of 6 to 12 grains will cure all external and internal evils; she will draw to herself, as the magnet draws iron, all sulphurous diseases, will calm thepains of all the limbs, will cure leprosy, gout, stone, syphilis, paralysis, dropsy, consumption, cancer and all invest ailments.
In short, human reason cannot sufficiently understand or appreciate the virtue of medicines prepared with the help of microcosmic water, for in it is hidden the perfect cure for all ills; and like will be conquered by like, in spite of the enemies of the truth, who do not want to hear anything and are content to wander with the blind.
CHAPTER XXIV
Ofthe Mineral Stone.
Howt and what it is made of.
In the name of the Lord, takethe blue stone, as it is found towards the rising sun and in our mountains. Take of this Green Lion as much as you will; put in a retort the phlegm to be distilled until the white smoke rises. Leave to cool and break the retort; you will then find the Red Lion which must be pulverized and retorted and heated with violent fire in the Lake of the Virginand very sour vinegar. The fire, you must continue it for 8 days and as long as white smoke appears. When you open the retort, you will find the crow's head, in which there is a white dove. Take this black earth and calcine it for 4 hours in the streetlight furnace or smelting furnace. Then wash 7 times with distilled rainwater to extract the white dove, calcine it, resolve and evaporate until all the salt, perfectly clarified, appears like a sparkling Of this white foliated earth, you must take 1 part; of the Red Lion's Blood, 2 parts, and pour over it the Lake ofthe Virginso that everything dissolves in it. Then you will filter and put the composition in a duly sealed vial, slow digesting, tempered, 9 months, finally long enough for the whole thing to coagulate into a blood red stone. N/Athe mineral stone is over, and it is the most precious medicine in the world for all tartar diseases. The dose is 3 or 4 grains in good Malvasia wine or any other old wine. It purifies the constitution, makes the heart joyful, maintains and comforts radical humidity, makes gray hair disappear, dispels headaches and all kinds of fevers and pestilent poisons, cures gout, restores and renews the whole man. .
CHAPTERXXV
OfPhalaia Medicine _ and Asa.
How to prepare and use it .
Take perfectly cleansed phalaia root and for heavenly dew water over it so that it protrudes 4 fingers. The container must have a flat bottom and the neck, which is very long, must be hermetically sealed. Put on a smoky fire and not on the common fire produced by coal or wood. When the material remained a month in this heat, it had time to open and its menstruation took on the most beautiful golden yellow color.
You will separate and keep the liquor for the preparation of all kinds of remedies as I will indicate in my little treatise: On the healing of catarrhs by the magic method, following in this the example of all the alchemists who have been before me , and so that this mystery remains with the Philosophers who have worked and spent a lot to manage to unravel the mystery. They have smashed many vessels, consumed a considerable mass of coal , and possibly swallowed up all of their possessions. What does it matter! Keep searching and laying your hands on the coal, and by the grace of the highest Spagyrist you will obtain what I and others have obtained.
CHAPTER XXI
How one must prepare the Vegetable
and the Animal and how one can extract
the quintessence from them.
To extract the quintessence of plants and animal matter, they must be reduced to their three principles. Afterwards, the mode is the same for all real spagyrists and I have already described it above. This water, you will pour it on its own salt and you will leave the preparation in moderate heat, until all the earth is dissolved and converted into water, and that the other principle, that is to say sulfur and oil are sunk into his body . This soaking should not be done all at once, but gradually and drop by drop. Then the oil will freeze at the same time as the salt. Finally, this salt will be dissolved in his own spirit, and faeces will remain which will be separated; the pure will be placed ina flask and put on a graduated fire. The volatile spirit will also make the fixed volatile, and the fixed will make the volatile stable. The magisterium will then be finished and the medicinal species transformed into arcane and quintessence which will perform miracles in all diseases whereas, without the blessing of the Most High, they would have no virtue.
Though the impious doctor and the unrepentant patient lightly pretend that only the remedy works and that there is no need for prayers, we will see, by daily experience, robust patients succumbing in spite of the use of powerful drugs. Therefore, any sincere and good Christian doctor must, above all, urge his patients to penance and prayer. If he doesn't, there is no successful medicine. There, as in diseases arising from the divine cause, one can manifestly follow the finger of God.
This is why I recommend to any doctor worthy of esteem and lover of true Medicine, to seek the grace of God and to work only to serve his greater glory and heal his sick. It is for this sincere doctor that I wrote this little treatise and to enlighten certain blind people, so that they might want to seekthe Pearl, and the true path that leads there, without getting tired; then afterwards to thank the Almighty, if he grants them His grace, and to use it for His very great glory and for the good of our neighbour.
OTHER HERMETIC COMPENDIUM
( Except )
CHAPTER I
How and where diseases come from
This little treatise, titled by me Table du Microcosme, teaches the art ofMedicine, or the art of preserving the health of the human body, of detecting the causes of illnesses and of dispelling said illnesses.
My little treatise will teach:
1° The pathology,
2°Therapeutics,
3° Anatomy,
4°surgery.
In this art, three things are to be considered:
The cause or source from which the disease arises; the location of the affected body; the cure and healing of evil.
Causes.
With regard to the causes of diseases, opinions are very varied; the Ancients and the Moderns have different sentiments on this point; and it would be to be hoped that the study of some would always be accompanied by the study of others, so that by comparison and deduction, we might come to possess the whole sum of science. But this is rather a wish than a hope; it is not for us to praise some and blame others; and we will get right to the heart of the matter.
All evils come from the three principles and from what we have previously called the origins or causes of disease. I want to show you the most important ones; after which the others will become easily understandable to you.
The first cause, and the main one, of the degradation of our bodies, of old age and death, yes, of all the evils which afflict our miserable life, is the fall of our first parents, who not only bequeathed to us a corrupt nature but still the tendency to do all the evil that keeps us in corruption! This is where our total incomprehension of the faults that we commit every day in our mad blindness and in yielding to the infernal instinct that is deep within ourselves comes from. This is why we attract the wrath of the God of Justice who tries us by sending us all kinds of diseases and pains. And this is the cause called Divine Cause.
The second is the bad influence of the stars, because there are frequent changes in their course. As they unceasingly for their influences on terrestrial things, the radical or balsamic mood of our body is multiplied or diminished or perverted, according to the aspects of these stars. This is the cause called Astral Cause.
Three other kinds of causes can bring about change and sometimes destruction in our body:
The inheritance of the temperament with which we are born. It isthe Natural Cause.
Another comes to us magically, from the perversion of wicked beings who want to harm us and lead to destruction. It isthe Spiritual Cause.
The last is found in the things which are daily necessary for the maintenance of our life: drinking, eating, movement, rest, sleeping and waking, which must be proportionate to the needs of each one, to the temperaments, under penalty of provoking diseases of an origin calledthe Poisonous Cause.
From the affected part. It is evident that it influences the form of evil. We will not insist on it.
CHAPTER II
Of the healing of diseases.
There are two methods:
1° the Galenic method: the opposites must be cured by the opposites.
(2) the ancient Hermetic Art, which obtains new successes every day and liberates the body from illnesses hitherto considered incurable, and which rests on the axiom: Likes cannot be cured of likes. The fundamental principle is sympathy and antipathy, of which the doctor must above all inform himself, because, from these inclinations will result the true means and remedies, when the doctor will have observed the analogy and the magnetic concordance between the Microcosm and the Macrocosm. He will then search, among the plants, minerals and animals, if they do not have a signature in conformity with the member or the diseased organ, and will choose the object bearer of this signature as a remedy. And, since the signature is imprinted by the mind, the remedy will work when it has been stripped of its gross parts; then he will go straight to his fellow man. Thus the shape or signature of the heart will go to the heart, that of the hands or the feet will go to the hands or the feet; and likewise for the head, spleen, liver and all the limbs. But the medicine should only contain the balm extracted from his body, in order to strengthen the balm of the Microcosm and help man.
Similarly, if the trouble comes from water, fire, earth or air, you have to find out how it acts on the principles: Salt, Sulfur, Mercury, and heal with the quintessence of the four elements and of the three principles, whatever organ is affected, for like cures like. If it happens that we notice the signature of a star, we must study the influences of this star; and also when we find the signature of an animal or a plant, we must use this animal or this plant. For example , our flying eagle has the signature of the North Star, which is that of the human body .It therefore acts universally on all the members, on all the balm of the Microcosm.
We will therefore look for the signatures of the three kingdoms, because God speaks to man by means of the signs printed on all his creation. These signs speak to him and recommend themselves to him like wine through the cluster hanging from the vine. It is through them that the Ancients had the knowledge of remedies, that they discovered the nature and virtue of plants, animals and mining products. And behold: This is the alphabet of nature, by means of which one can read and understand the great book of nature.
But, as this knowledge is rare, we thought fit to indicate hereafter the particular medicines of which we tested the force and which the experiment showed us as marvelously active.
CHAPTER III
Medicines in particular .
It is quite right that Damascene advises to stick to a small number of Medicines, and only after having tested their effectiveness many times. The art of Medicine is very extensive; a man does not have enough of his whole life to learn it in his sum. Since, says Hippocrates, Art is long and life is short, we must stick to long-tested remedies. It is useful and good advice to leave to his successors, in succinct writings, the result of his experience. So I decided to describe the drugs that worked for me.
I will first name the Universal Medicine, which destroys all the impurities contrary to the universal balm and drives them out of the human body by helping nature to comfort it.
The second is the Tincture of the Microcosm, after it has been digested for a certain time in its just ferment and it has been delivered from its arsenical superfluities, It then resolves into a beautiful humidity which one can take 3 or 4 drops in wine, when the body will, of course, have been previously purged with the purgative gold.
The third is the Vegetable Stone of 4 to 6 grains each morning, for a more or less prolonged cure depending on the case.
The fourth is the Animal Stone, which will have been made, spagyrically, with the mummy of a healthy man.
The fifth will act by magnetic attraction, when a talisman has been made, under the influence of certain constellations, in order to attract spiritual exhalations to the patient suffering from disease The growth and the sap of this tree planted in him and nourished by the universal spirit will bring him healing.
The sixth is the transplantation, by natural means, of the mummy from the living body to a sensible animal : the disease will be carried from the patient to the animal and the patient will recover.
The seventh is the Mineral Stone taken from our Leo.
The eighth is taken from Phalaia and Asa.
The ninth is the quintessence of Pearls and the tincture of Corals.
The tenth, and one of the best, is the Elixir of Life, excellent in its virtue and in the multiplicity of its effects, as the Ancient Philosophers knew and affirmed.
CHAPTER IV
Of the preparation of medicines
in particular.
They are absolutely mistaken those who claim that we must use drugs in their corporality. If one simply grinds the body into powder and prepares it in the manner of apothecaries, the effect will be rather injurious. The real preparation consists in spagyrically separating the pure from the impure, the balm or mumie from the poison, and the kernel from the shell. It is by this means that diseases will be quickly and completely cured. But care must be taken that faeces are not left there by inexperienced students; the work must be carried out by learned and skilful masters in whom one can place one's confidence.
The effects of a medicine differ in strength depending on how it has been treated even as it is applied to diseases of the same origin. Also the true hermetic doctor does not hesitate to put his hand to work himself.
To arrive at the goal, separate the earth from the fire, the spirit from the body, the tincture or quintessence from the dross, the good from the bad, the life from the death and the pure from the impure with much industry and care. By the universal menstruation and the vinegar of the wise all the virtues are multiplied into a quintessence suitable to cure all diseases and to fortify the natural balm in man, because of their mutual sympathy. And, by his antipathy to disease, he drives it out of the body.
This, then, is what emerges from the two axioms of medicine: To cure like by like and contrary by contrary. Both are right: the pure quintessence of medicine drives out the impurity which is contrary to it, and strengthens the balm of the body, which is similar to it. This is what I wanted to put before your eyes, dear reader, in the hope that you would not mind too much.
CHAPTER V
Universal Medicine
There are many who claim to have drawn this universal medicine from its particular raw material; but usage and experience have shown the contrary. For this universal medicine must be drawn from a universal matter and not from some particular body. This universal matter is the water of which Genesis speaks: I. (2 and 20), and the earth which comes from it (17 and 24). This water is precisely the matter from which all matters are created by means of SALT formed by water and earth. It is from this universal matter that the ancients drew their medicine. In this water is the true seed of all minerals and metals;when said seed is concocted by proper heat, it takes on a body and becomes a metal or a stone or something like that. But this water has in it two substances which are both necessary for the formation of all things: one is an impure earth which is an impediment and also a clothing of the interior sulfur which must animate all the water; by this impure earth the effectiveness of said sulfur is weakened and constrained. The second substance is sulfur itself,
It is here that the Philosophers must be understood when they say that every mineral has its origin in Mercury and Sulphur; but they in no way mean ordinary mercury, but the mercurial water described above; and no longer vulgar sulphur, but a spiritual body in which the natural fire is hidden, and which coagulates the mercurial water and congeals it.
Water is also compared to woman and sulfur to man, water being coagulated by long coction of its internal sulfur, and containing the seeds of the metals.
This water therefore has two substances, one internal and the other external. Internal is hot, dry sulfur. He is invisible, and he is the Father. The external is the body of water, moist and cold, it is visible and it is called Mercury or the Mother. These two qualities, in which the four elements are contained, but hidden by a regular process of nature, when you bring them to light, you obtain the highest of Medicines. For the internal heat is nothing other than the celestial nature and the life-giving heat of the sun, by which all our lower world was created, generated, produced, and then renewed and regenerated. This is why ordinary water is a matter far removed from metals. These, by the heat of the earth, aredrivenfrom the aqueous form to the form of vapor and purified, then, again coagulated, by their internal sulphur, into a thick matter from which come all the imperfect metals, when the earth mixed with the water is oily and impure; and, when the earth is fat and pure, it forms gold, the pure metal.
The conception takes place thus: After the Stars and the four Elements have thrown their seed and force into the center of the earth, the Archea of the earth sublimates them and sends them in the form of vapor, through all the pores of the earth, which is spongey; this sublimated vapor changes into water and causes all beings in the earth to grow.
Note, above all, that the Mercury of the Philosophers is not the common; it is a mercury fabricated by nature, it is a water, not common water, but the water of our Saturnia. In this mercury lies all that the wise seek, for in its water is sulphur, or soul, or living fire, hidden but strong.
It follows from all this that universal medicine should not be drawn from vulgar gold. It is necessary to extract the sulfur by the sulphur, that is to say by the mercurial water animated by its sulphur. If you take gold and throw it into this water, it will dissolve in it like ice dissolves in hot water. This water contains the force of all sublunary things and it is from it that we must make universal medicine, which confirms the words of Sendivogius: He who can coagulate this water by heat and unite it with his spirit, that the Bird of Hermes and the Universal Spirit have fixed their habitat, and it is from it that universal Medicine is drawn, as Sendivogius tells us in his treatise II.
Dig a pit and take our earth there with the living water, that is, the universal menstruation; in our water you will find our armoniacal salt and the universal spirit that contains all things.
In this element of water, not only do we find all the other elements, but we can also dissolve, preserve and multiply all things, and strengthen their virtues. This is why there are also the Medicines which possess the force of lower and higher things. There is no doubt that all bodies can be dissolved there and brought back to their first matter, since they were all water in the beginning. A being that has been able to harden can also become water again, and this by means of our Sea Water, or Water of Life, or Water that does not wet the hands. No other, whether from a well or a fountain, or etching or any other kind of water, cannot serve; all are harmful except will find something a thousand times better than gold.
CHAPTER VI
From Universal Menstruation, in which all
metals dissolve like ice
in water.
Everything is Nothing and Nothing is Everything. The universal menstruation comes out of this nothing and yet everything comes from it. It is this universal menstruation that is alluded to in the first chapter of Genesis; it is a birthing force; a mother and nurse of minerals, plants and animals. He is mind and body.
This body, in the beginning, has a damp and cold appearance, but it has in it its spirit, which is its life, and, although its star is cold and dry inside, it is nevertheless from it, from a hidden abyss, that plants, animals and minerals, stones, salts, watery fruits, etc., will come out. It is in him that which will be drawn from the rays of the sun and the moon by means of our magnet or steel.
The way to draw this water, and to produce our Sabammice, is little known. But enough about that!
CHAPTER VII
Medical gold.
We must know that the Universal Medicine or Medical Gold is found in all beings, but can be extracted more or less easily . Above all, it is in Gold, in Wine and in Man. Universal medicine is the Philosopher's Stone of the Ancients, which not only cures all diseases, but also purifies all imperfect metals, and changes them into pure gold. It is made only of the Universal Matter from which all beings have been drawn, as we said above. By Universal Medicine, we mean to speak of our magnesia, from which we can draw the Golden Panacea and the Elixir of Life. We will return to this subject in its place.
TO THE ONE IN THREE GOD, WHO HAS GIVEN ME THE UNDERSTANDING, THE WILL AND THE POWER TO ACCOMPLISH , MY ETERNAL GRATITUDE.
ALLELUIA!
THE STRENGTH AND THE POWER, THE HONOR AND THE GLORY BE TO GOD OUR FATHER, TO JESUS CHRIST THE LAMB AND TO THE HOLY SPIRIT IN ALL THE CENTURIES.
AMEN!
TRIPARTITE PHALAIA
Extracts from the fourth treatise of the Chemical Antidote.
THAT IS TO SAY
The Fundamental Operation which will teach us how to extract the Mumie from the Microcosm without danger, and the Art of making it a Panacea for the cure of illnesses.
CHAPTER I
Of Phalaia Medicine and what it is.
Phalaia (Panacea) is a medicine drawn from the three principles: Salt, Sulfur and Mercury coagulated into a transparent and clear stone, and, by the Spagyric Art, (by putrefaction, sublimation, solution, conjunction, coagulation and fixation) prepared in one unique medicine and a panacea with which all diseases.
CHAPTER III
Which Phalaia the author wanted to talk about in this little treatise.
My intention here is not to speak of the Universal Phalaia or Stone of the Philosophers, but of the Tincture of the Microcosm or Animal Phalaia, having, by the grace of the Almighty, worked it out with my own hands and brought it to a successful conclusion. . I will not speak more at this time of the Mineral Stone and the Vegetable Stone since my two small treatises: The Chemical Basilica and the Golden Panacea describe them and make them sufficiently heard.
CHAPTER IV
In what aspect the Phalaia Animale or Microcosmic Stone must appear.
In the name of Almighty God, we must take the salt water from our fountain, as it comes out of our Sea, whose origin, in the beginning, was in Judea, and which was diverted therefrom by cunning. and treachery of women, so that she can be found now all over the world. Of this sea water, one must take as much as one can harvest during the rising moon; and though it can be found at any time, this is always the best (especially at the beginning of Mars) or when there is conjunction or good aspect of the Sun with the Moon. The harvest will begin in the first degree of Aries and end in the last degree of Virgo. The harvest done and sufficiently rested,one-third empty, and put it on hot ashes; then you will see the Melusines coming and going in this sea water, and that at the beginning of spring. But when the sun passes into Leo and summer approaches, and the hottest days come, the Melusines disappear, and in their place you will see countless numbers of Pygmies.up and down as far as the beak of the retort, with such agility that I have often been surprised. These little gnomes or pygmies do a singular job, which consists in taking the most subtle salt that is in this sea and transporting it up to the capital, letting the water fall, through the neck, into the belly. of the retort, work which they repeat until all the salt of the sea is transported. So they disappear. This salt is the true mystery, the most subtle spirit and the true quintessence of the Microcosm. When this quintessence is extracted and rectified with the spirit of wine, it can, of itself, coagulate into a blood-red stone; or conjoined with the central salt of the earth of this denier,
It is then the Phalaia of the Microcosm, the Animal Stone, the Panacea of the Small World. And believe me when I tell you that I prepared this white sea salt twice, that I saw its precious redness with my own eyes, and that I can go, with the grace of God, even further. I could describe the preparation openly and without parables, if I were not held back by the vision of the betrayals against this noble science, and also the ingratitude of the world of the foxes whose tails have been cut off. And then, the times did not come, those times predicted by my master Theophrastus Paracelsus, who affirmed that, long after his death, these secrets would be divulged. These times will come, because:
TIME BRINGS TO THE LIGHT
ALL THAT WAS HIDDEN UNDER THE SNOW
AND THE GIFT OF GOD IS NOT ESTIMATED AT ITS VALUE .
CHAPTER V
Of the use of this Panacea and its dose.
It is used for all internal ailments, from 3 to 6 grains, or the weight of 6 grains of pepper, well dissolved in old wine. And we expect perspiration .
APPENDIX
Potable triple gold.
There are three degrees of drinking gold:
The first is named Mineral, the second Animal, and the third Vegetable.
To prepare the mineral potable gold, it must be extracted only from our Saturn, in the following way:
Take our gold, the one that is thrown on the highways, and which is black, white and red. You have to take it as you find it, smeared with mire and earth, and extract the juice, which looks very much like transparent camphor. He must be put in the purification bath for seven months, during which he will, out of fear, sweat blood, and conceive a sparkling virgin girl, whom he will then take for a wife. But, to punish him for this crime, the judge Justinian will lock him up, as well as his wife, in separate prisons, where the woman will give birth to a child who will be named the Son of the Philosophers. And the work of drinking gold will be finished;it will include in all, from the beginning to the end, two years.
Animal drinking gold consists of this:
Take water from our Sea, as much as you want. Cook it until you get a pure liquor that will turn into a white dove, then into the Phoenix Bird. This happens by the separation of the pure from the impure and by a single and continuous cooking, of which you will see the beginning and the end in six months. Thus will be completed the Animal Stone.
The third potable gold or Vegetable Stone is extracted from five species, in eight days at most. This is why it has also been called Vegetable Quintessence . The method of preparation is as follows:
Take the salt of vegetable Saturn, vegetable sulfur and vegetable mercury, as much of each as is necessary to incorporate them. First cook the salt of Saturn in the vegetable citrine egg (but without fire), so that it becomes water; then take quintessence of celestial dew, which you will impregnate with the soul of the Female Sea; grinds with the water of our vegetable Zoybeth until it becomes suave; mixes everything that has been distilled through our filter. Potable gold can thus be made in eight days and that is why it is called Eight -Day Work. But he who possesses the vegetable mercury and the quintessence in advance , can complete it in three days; and it isthen called the Work of the Three Days. Nevertheless, the quintessence of celestial dew must be gathered at its right and true time.
This last drinkable gold is a great comforter in all illnesses, although much less powerful than the mineral, because it acts only according to its particular virtues. It is sweeter than honey; its color is a beautiful light golden yellow and its fragrance so exquisite and pleasant that whoever tastes it thinks that it could well be taken from the realm of the dead and regained life. So, dear disciple, let me commend this secret to you (which I was able to unearth with much pain, labor and money), not only because it can be implemented quickly, but also because you will be able, by means of it, to comfort a large number of poor patients. And above all, don't forget that this is an arcane that must be diligently hidden from the unworthy and the profane!
THE GOLDEN PANACEA
Extracts from the Sixth Treatise of the Chemical Antidote.
Brief but philosophically in-depth description
of Potable Gold.
With warning, instructions and proofs that the true Potable Gold of the Philosophers can by no means be drawn from gold; and that all receipts must be held to be false, useless and without effect.
To the studious and voluntary reader.
After the Philosophers understood that a particular comforter of the heart and of the vital faculties is hidden and as if buried in gold, they thought that, with the help of God, there would be no medicine more powerful than gold for healing diseases. But that gold, in its corporeal form, even subtly mixed with alcohol or reduced to the finest powder, could have any effect in man, they were by no means convinced.
And what could they extract from the gold? His mind? But the latter was too strongly bound to the body of man for human warmth to separate it. It is therefore not surprising that metallic gold has been administered to the sick in vain, and, without denying the very properties of the mineral, it would have been necessary, as Avicenna says, to rid it of its filthy matter, so that it could exercise its influence without hindrance. Theophrastus teaches us that no metallic medicine can be assimilated by the human body until the metal has been brought back to its essence and made spiritual and drinkable.As for the other medicines drawn from metals, the best after drinking gold, I have intentionally dealt with them in a more summary way and I have indicated them at the end for the use and the good of my neighbour.
Thus is warned the studious and benevolent reader , whom I commend to the protection and mercy of God.
CHAPTER I
As followers of the Philosophy will recognize, there are several kinds of gold in the creations of nature:
The first, Astral,
The second, Mineral,
The third, Metallic,
The fourth, Elementary.
One calls astral that which still rests in its origin and, by that very fact, is still imperfect. Brother Basil (Basile Valentin) calls him Star of the Sun, because the stars still have in him their first influence and action. Theophrastus Paracelsus calls it: Electrum immaturus, and again: First composition of the Sun, because, precisely, nature has operated its first mixtures in it. We could also call it with reason: Gold immature. Aureum Vellus names it: First Being of the Sun and Theophrastus, in his little book of First Beings indicates how it can be obtained and, in his Archidoxes, hemakes it clear where it can be found and how it should be prepared and used.
Other Philosophers also call it: Saturn plumbago, or ore of lead, not only because of its heaviness, but because, in the beginning, nature was formed of a mass of lead, conceived by the union of the sun and from the moon.
The mineral gold is that which is still hidden in the mining of the mountains, before it was melted down and separated from its gangue in the form of simple metal.
Metallic gold is that which has been freed from its gangue by the great force of fire; it is the simple metal.
Elemental gold is that which forms the very being of beings. It is not gold itself, but it can be separated from it by the Spagyric Art, as well as from Mars and Venus and from the middle metals such as: Antimony, Vitriol, Axonge of the Sun, and the like. In these, according to Brother Basil Valentine and other Philosophers, the Sulfur of the Sun is found but cannot be extracted unless the sealed doors of their four elements are opened to let out the Salt, Sulfur and Mercury. separated; what a true chemist versed in the secrets of the Art will easily obtain.
The name gold is also sometimes given to certain medicines: Golden Egg, Diaphoretic Gold, Golden Water, Golden Pills, although there is very little or no gold in their composition; they are so named only for the strength of their operation and for their marvelous influence.
It is not said which of these four species of gold should be used for the manufacture of potable gold for Physicians. It is therefore necessary above all to know which material and which form to choose to make it medicinal and drinkable.
It is the result of my own experiences that the next chapters will deal with to enlighten the reader.
CHAPTER II
I have previously indicated with what pains, what care and expenditure of money and time I gradually succeeded in educating myself on all that relates to chemistry, mines and metals and how, for many years, I deepened the branches of Science, both on the side of theory and practice, and how I assimilated everything that a true chemist must know.
Of all the books I have studied, those of Brother Basile Valentin have informed me most accurately about the spiritual matter which gave birth to gold, in the beginning, and from which drinking gold can be drawn much more easily and logically than gold arrived at the perfect state. That is why I recommend his books to serious and sincere students.
CHAPTER III
It is therefore affirmed and proved by all the experiments of the Philosophers that it is impossible to obtain true potable gold from perfect gold, unless it be prepared by the Spagyric Art, as Theophrastus says.
CHAPTER IV
If, therefore, one wishes to extract from perfect gold a drinkable medicine, it is essential to reduce it beforehand to a very subtle lime, but this operation must not be carried out with the aid of any strong or corrosive water, because it would subsequently be impossible to dulcify the gold and revitalize it.
When this is done, one must dissolve the gold, gently, with suavity, and carefully separate the pure from the impure, in order to bring it, without any corrosive, to the greatest transparency.
CHAPTER V
This solution of gold is considered the greatest secret by the Philosophers; it is the greatest mystery of the Spagyric Art, and only the reading of hermetic books could not give knowledge of it without manual labor and personal experience, and also the trade of a faithful friend. It is therefore very important to know of what true and imperishable menstruation it must be made. Here, a real service could be rendered to the artist by putting him on the right track, which leads to the entrance to the Treasure of Nature; but the ingratitude of the world holds me back; the most severe and the first obligation of the Philosopher is not to reveal this secret, so that it does not fall into the hands of the worthy and the impious.He it would also be unfair that what I have acquired with so much trouble and expense should be displayed and made available to the lazy; and even the true Candidate and true Son of the Art who studiously and respectfully scrutinizes these mysteries will find in very few authors notable and precise instructions.
CHAPTER VI
Since it is proved by experience that this solution cannot be made by any corrosive water, another must be found which is neither corrosive nor destructive, but possesses in it such affection and affinity that it can unite with gold to extract the pure and leave the impure at the bottom of the vessel; what wine and man alone can achieve. We have to stop there.
CHAPTER VII
It is with great reason that this potable gold is called vegetable, animal and mineral, for without these qualities it cannot be prepared. The Philosophers claim that without the spirit of wine it cannot be made; but I tell you in truth that our celer is better than the spirit of wine, because it is precisely what Raymond Lully calls his celestial and which must be extracted in two ways: from the Macrocosm and from the Microcosm, because everything that is in the Big World is also in the Little World and has only the same nature, manner, effect and result, same smell and same taste; except that one is easier to reach than the other.
O our subject exposed daily to the eyes of the crowd, and yet misunderstood!
O our Aer without which no one can live!
O our Armoniac Salt!
O our vegetable salt!
O our Mercury without which nothing can be born in the whole world!
O our little bird rising from our sea!
O our frozen spirit, visible and invisible, fixed and volatile, water that does not wet the hands, water of our sea and water of life, of which Isaac the Dutchman speaks thus:
“Know, O my son! That mercury is the first being of all things; for, before there was time, there was water; but it was dry, powdery water; yet spiritual and volatile; and, who does not know this salt, will never obtain anything in the Art. And that is our volatile brimstone.
My dear, faithful and sincere artists, I have, out of pure sympathy and all at once, discovered the truth in a few words. If, with humility and the fear of God, you go deeper into this little discourse, you will find much more in it than in many great books. Do not be misled, therefore, by so many different terms and explanations, for everything amounts to the same object, and the true menses has here been revealed to you in the clearest way. You will thank the Eternal, King and Lord of all Kings, the Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth (who alone can give understanding and wisdom to those who ardently pray to him). To him the praise, the glory and the eternal recognition!
And do not be offended by the naivety of my speeches in this little treatise, because I am neither a smooth talker, nor an orator, nor a learned Doctor in controversy. I have not enriched my instructions with garlands and idle words, which do nothing for the business or the health of the man; for truth is simple and needs no ornaments: Simplicity is the seal of truth. And if you don't discover the core and center of my drinking gold and the way to achieve it, you need look no further, for I have already said too much. This gold and first being is much more perfect than that drawn from a metal, so it cannot be found on all paths and is not good to harvest at all times. The work requires very subtle operations before it is perfect.
CHAPTER VIII
To finish, I will repeat once again to the attentive and benevolent reader that the drinking gold of which I speak in this little treatise is not that which is mentioned in the great works and which is in question for the trans-mutation of metals. As for the tincture of the sun, which has the transparent and subtle color, it is extracted from a spirit of tartarized wine.
The dose is 3 to 6 drops at the most in good old wine, for any illness whatsoever, recent or old. It unites with the balm of nature and strengthens it in such a way that it expels and extinguishes, with the grace and help of Almighty God, and without the aid of any other medicine, all ailments, pains and body disorders.
THE BIRD OF HERMES
Extracts from the Seventh Treatise on the Chemical Antidote.
Mercury, Sulfur and Salt of the Philosophers in a single subject.
FIRST PART
1. MERCURY
CHAPTER I
From the beginning of our Medicine and its generation.
All wisdom and precious gifts come from God.
Whoever would like to obtain our Medicine without the permission of the Most High will remain far from it. But he who is a child and friend of God will continue the work of nature: nature produces and creates according to the highest art; whoever would not follow her and imitate her would fly without wings.
First and foremost, the Sovereign Majesty created the four Elements to which all of nature is subject; and these elements are ordered in such a way that they act on each other: Fire, the first and most noble, acts on Air and produces Sulphur; the Air operates in the Water and produces the Salt: the Water then acts in the Earth and generates the Mercury. Here, then, are the three Principles born of the four Elements; they then remain in the Earth, are preserved there and are nourished there; and this is why Hermes affirms, in the Emerald Tablet: The earth is its nurse...
CHAPTER II
From the Mercury of the Philosophers.
What it is.
After the Four Elements, by the Law of Nature, have thrown their force and power into the center of the Earth, the heat which is enclosed there sublimates them and, raising them in vapor, to the surface, resolves them into water, which vaporous water is called Mercury. It is from this Mercury that all things in the whole world are born. And that is why the Mercury of the Philosophers is not ordinary mercury, nor any other body extracted from imperfect metals, but it is their principle and their root. And the Philosophers were not wrong in saying: What the wise seek is in Mercury. One can, in truth, give it all the names; since it is from him that all things are born; but its real name is: AER.Believe me when I tell you that, if I had not seen with my eyes and touched with my hands this coagulated air, the color of snow, It would have been impossible for me to believe that there was dry water in our sea . When I had seized it, I was very surprised to see that a thing of so little value could be All in all. Still doubting my discovery, I wanted to know if it was really air; I put it in a vasediscovered, and suddenly it disappeared and became air again in a short time; he had rejoined his chaos, attracted to him magnetically, because before that he had been air himself. Which I am very happy about!
Therefore I entreat all who have come to know this AER by name and virtues, to always stand in the presence of the Almighty Lord God and sternly hide this secret from the unworthy, so as not to incur the curse of all Philosophers and eternal damnation.
The Mercury of the Philosophers is therefore nothing other than coagulated air and dry water hidden in our Sea. And so says Hermes: The wind carried it in its belly...
CHAPTER III
Where and in what place our Mercury can be found.
Where our Mercury must be, the Philosophers have carefully hidden; barely one in a thousand indicates this. But to those who deserve it, the teaching is given in parables and veiled speeches.
In the beginning, the earth was without valleys, without mountains, without stones or minerals, completely flat and desert; but it was diversified in a thousand ways as soon as the elements had thrown their seed into its center. The Archea of the Earth having sublimated our mercury in the Mother, the matrices are found to be innumerable, because as many places as many matrices, and one purer than the other. However, our mercury is unique, like a river flowing from a source. By the diversity of the matrices there result all sorts of colors, salts, oils, and a thousand other things. Mercury is spreading everywherehe who runs on salt will be salty; he who runs on oil will be fat, etc. For the water does not change the place it reaches but the place changes the water. So, although all things are mercury, all things are different, according to the womb and the degree of digestion in the womb, and the degree of cooking by the fire of nature.
Let us recognize with all the Philosophers that our mercury is in all things, vegetable, animal and mineral, but it is more or less difficult to extract and more or less impure. Also, after much research, our predecessors found that, from a single material, it could be easily drawn. This matter is Saturn, or lead ore, ie Antimony. Thus says Rosinus: I tell you that our living water is drawn from the ore of lead, which works everything. And the Great Rosary says: The Mercury of the Philosophers is that in which nature has yet worked little, and which, under a metallic appearance, she has left imperfect. Similarly Flamel writes: In the earth grows a matter of lead, a coagulated mercury; that's the one we have to take.Finally, all the Philosophers agree in saying that, of Saturn,: free fire to distill a phlegm will come out of it; continue the distillation until the white spirits no longer come out. Set them aside and place another container; increase the heat until you get blood-red droplets: it's the blood of the Green Lion that must be coagulated and frozen with its own salt. The dose is one grain in epilepsy , apoplexy, paralysis, mania, tuberculosis, jaundice, dropsy, stone , gout, hypochondria , pox and all fevers, pernicious or not.
SECOND PART
OF SULFUR
CHAPTER V
Sulfur of the Philosophers . What it is.
In the first part, I said that all earthly things come from an exhalation or volatile air, and when the same vapour, rising from the center of the earth, is sublimated, it mixes with the oily substances of the said earth and y coagulates; it is then called the Sulfur of the Philosophers. When this compound is then purified by coction, there comes out a fiery substance; it is the real sulphur, which is also called Philosopher's Egg and Philosopher's Vitriol. It should not be forgotten, however, that the mercury of the Sages contains in itself its own sulfur, pure and good, by the right mixture of Nature itself. The Sulfur of the Philosophers is therefore nothing other than a double Mercury. Come another, Pamphile.
CHAPTER VI
From the Philosopher's Egg.
What materials should we extract our Sulfur from?
The Philosophers say: Antimony is Mercury and Vitriol is Sulphur; but that is only a way of speaking, for they imply that for our work neither vitriol nor antimony is useful. Rather they stick to the egg, for in it are the four elements in one subject: the yolk is fire or sulfur, the white is water, the little skin is air, and the shell, earth or salt. The bird within will be the real mercury, the soul and the quintessence, the only thing we need for our medicine. All enlightened doctors know that wonderful medicines can be drawn from our egg, which they have hidden under the names of the White Body of the Philosophers and the Clarity of the Two Mounds.
CHAPTER VII
How one should extract the Sulfur of the Philosophers and prepare it.
Take 6 pounds of chilled Philosopher's Egg; put them on your stove, in a retort, and place in front of a container. Distills the phlegm with gentle heat as long as the white vapors rise and in the container the egg of Hermes settles; then increase the fire and continue it until you see the volatile gold falling in red drops. It is your sulfur of the Philosophers, and your drinkable gold, which heals all diseases and renews the whole human body. To a man broken by age he will restore the strength of youth and vitality, as if he were 25 years old again.
THIRD PARTOF SALT
CHAPTER VIII
Salt of the Philosophers.
What it is.
We have learned from the Holy Scriptures that God created the whole world out of nothing. Man alone was made of a little earth; and this earth contained all the rest of creation. This is why Our Savior Jesus Christ says: You are the salt of the earth (Ev. according to Saint Matthew). It is in the earth that the salt is found which resolves, separates and reduces all things into first matter. We see it for the grain of wheat which cannot come to multiplication and new birth unless it is thrown into the field, where it is resolved by the corrosive or salt of the earth.
But we find in the earth three kinds of salt: one volatile and compared to salmiac or mercury; one of medium nature, compared to nitre salt or vitriol; and the third, alkaline or fixed, compared with common salt and gold. If you can follow and discern my intention, you will have learned more in these few words than in fifteen years of work.
Finally, I will add, to conclude, and confidentially, that our salt is nothing other than Sulfur and Mercury, in which salt lies.
CHAPTER IX
Where is our Salt and from which substances we must extract it.
Salt is the root of all Art. He is the key to open and close. So the whole secret is hidden in the Salt.
Hermes says: The salt of metals is the Stone of the Philosophers. He says again: He who has the salt of the metals knows the secret of the ancient sages. Indeed, in the salt of the metals are hidden the body, the spirit and the soul of Sulfur and Mercury. This is why the Philosophers carefully concealed its origin; but, to their enlightened children, they nevertheless say that it is in the Water. By this they mean that in the running water there are many beautiful transparent flints, similar to crystals, of which all kinds of precious stones are made, such as: hyacinths, rubies, topazes, emeralds and sapphires. I have often prepared it myself.
And here's how to do it:
Take the Saturn; calcine it until it is a beautiful red; take 5 parts of this red lead; calcine 1 part of silica, and, the whole well grated and mixed, put on the fire. From it will emerge first green stones like emeralds, then red like rubies, and, according to the degree of the fire, of different colors.
The Philosophers also say that in their stone resides the greatest fire. Everyone knows you can make fire by hitting flint with steel. They add that it is a vile thing, of which no one pays any attention, and yet without which one cannot live. Well, I'm asking you. O my brother, what is more despised than flint, which lies everywhere ? and yet, who could live without fire? How to heat and cook food? I wanted to make you hear this so that you agree that the Philosophers described their stone well but that they were misunderstood by the unworthy and the ignorant.
Whoever desires further explanations will find them in the book called The College of Philosophers, which contains concordant passages from the most famous philosophers. Now, they all say that we cannot complete the work without our salt; and it is our Salmiac, which resolves all bodies into oil or clear water. It is the key called key of sapience, by which one arrives at all.
CHAPTER X
How to prepare the Salt
of the Philosophers.
Our work is called women's work and child's play , because it is enough to clean, wash, purify, resolve and cook. The salts will then become clear, pure. One must reiterate the sublimation, solve and coagulate, until they have become completely crystalline. Then take as much of our stone as you like, and put it in a well-strengthened retort, and distil it by degrees; then it will rise in the vapor, with the spirit , a volatile salt, whichwill attach to the collar. You will bring it out, then you will push the fire until you get the blood-red colored oil, which is our ethereal gold, the philosopher's gold, still stinking and poisonous. You will continue this distillation for another 48 hours; then it will be perfect and you can remove it and preserve it well so that nothing expires.
Then take the faeces that have remained at the bottom of the retort and calcine them over an open fire to reduce them to ashes. Then proceed with hot distilled rainwater to extract the salt until there are no more traces; the water being filtered and evaporated, you will find the fixed salt. It must be purified, filtered, dissolved and coagulated until pure and crystalline salts are obtained; and, when you will have rectified the volatile salt and the oil obtained previously, you will then have the three principles of the same subject.
Thus, oursalmiac is our mercury or spirit; our gold is our sulfur or soul; and our earth is our salt or body, which we call, in other chapters, Elixir of life, and which we must conjoin and freeze, until we obtain a colored stone reddish-brown ruby, the color of the vial in which it was melted . This stone consumes all diseases, whatever name they bear, like a devouring fire; its dose is very small and its effect very large. She is sovereign against cancer, leprosy, dropsy, gout,stone, venereal disease, all fevers and infections, against impotence, sterility of men and women. In short, it repairs any damage caused inside and out, as we have already indicated elsewhere.
Conclusion of the entire Treaty .
There is only one Stone, which is called Magnesia, and only one matter, which is the Prime Matter of all metals; and only one preparation, by means of only one Fire and only one Furnace which we call Athanor. The only preparation is Solution and Freeze; and our matter is truly catholic and universal before fermentation, but after it is specific.
Therefore, dear brother, do not let yourself be deceived by the fallacious indications of three diets and three species, if you understand nature ! There is only one thing, one root, one essence, to which nothing is added, but from which the superfluous is taken away. It is One in Three. I only described one thing, and I did it that way for three reasons:
1° I wanted to instruct the sincere student and show him my goodwill. Excluded are the traitors and the perfidious, the Misochimists, the carriers of fine noses, who have the mischief to hear the grass grow!
2° I have laid down, for the first only, the principles of the Work to be studied conscientiously and at length. As for the ignorant and the lazy, shoemakers, tailors and coopers and other coarse craftsmen who would like to undertake it, they will be there in front like donkeys in front of a lyre.
3` Finally, if I wrote in a brief and sometimes ambiguous way, it is because I hate long chatter; but it is also to oblige the sincere reader to consult all the more the works of the ancient Philosophers, and to work according to them. It will therefore also be necessary to exclude those who do not willingly put their hands to the dough or the coal and wait for the food to be chewed in their mouths:
FOR GOD GIVES HIS GOODS TO THE LABOR-FRIENDLY.
Finally, I wrote only for the only God-fearing, pious, diligent and humble student, who, apart from what I teach him, goes to God alone to obtain this Medicine. And this also excludes, of course, gamblers, drunkards, rogues and wanderers, the profane and the impious, in short, all those who voluntarily bury themselves in the mire of sin.
Are you then a pious and just interrogator of Nature, a continuator of the enlightened Philosophers? You will then be able to detect in my teaching that neither antimony, nor egg, nor flint are used in our work; I have used terms of comparison, all substances being specific, and issuing from our unique Mercury, catholic and universal.
I beg the Almighty and Omniscient God , He who searches the hearts and the loins, to remove the traitors and the impious, to strike them with blindness: Let them have eyes and see not; that they hear and do not understand; and, if they begin, they cannot finish! But may He condescendingly impart to the Just the wisdom and understanding, the grace and blessing that this work demands, that they may use it to the greater praise and glory of His Sacred Name!
AMEN!
SONG OF SONGS OF SOLOMON
Extracts from the eighth treatise of the Chemical Antidote.
On Universal Medicine.
On the author of the Song of Songs, the agreement has always been made: He is the very wise King Solomon.
The disagreement is on the subject itself.
People versed in the study of religious things have various opinions:
The rabbis of the Hebrews hold it for an epithalamium composed in honor of the wedding of Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh Vaphris, king of Egypt and famous conqueror of Hazor, Meggidon and Gazara.
The Talmudists see in it the union of God with the Synagogue.
Roman Catholics see Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary there; the Germans, the magnificent peace that flourished in the time of Solomon ; the French, Jesus Christ and the Church, his Bride. Others see in them the august engagement evoked by the great Apostle of the Gentiles (Eph. V, 32). There discourse the Bridegroom and the Bride; friends and girlfriends of both congratulate them. Finally, those who possess human wisdom and knowledge see it as a song in praise of the Blessed Stone of the Sages.There, indeed, they say, is admirably and royally described the transformation of the thick into the subtle, of the obscure into the clear, of the moist into the dry, of the volatile into the fixed.
Coagulation and the appearance of colors: ch. V (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 1 4) .
Fixing: c. II (12) and ch. VIII (4). The 4 parts of the philosophical year until the perfect preparation:
Winter, or Putrefaction, c. II (11).
Spring or the Appearance of Colors: ch. II (12).
Summer, or citrination: c. II (13). The fall or the rubification: c. II (13). The tense to use: ch. VIII (4).
Multiplication: c. VI (7). Increase and use: chap. VIII (8).
Explanation on the "Subject"
Matter and form, coming from God by means of nature: ch . I (5 and 6). The subject (8).
The Lily of Art: c. II (1), preparation and separation of the pure from the impure.
Direction of Fire: c. II (7) and c. IV (16). The Definition of the Vase: c. II (9) and c. V (4). The Seal of Hermes: c. 1V (12).
Putrefaction : c. III (i).
Sublimation and distillation: ch. III (6).
There is only one thing in the world, which, according to the Philosophers, contains in itself the white and the red, called, one, male, the other female. No animal, vegetable or mineral can claim to be such: It has passive, a dead and a living substance; the ignorant consider it very vile: It has in it the four elements; it can be found everywhere and everyone possesses it commonly; it is bought at a low price; it is taken for a solid; it is a thing which the earth produces and which descends from the sky, and which is called our eagle, our magnesia, our green lion and our egg.
preparation
Its preparation consists only of the coction with the fire. Slow at first, moderate towards the middle, strong at the end.
It rises by itself, blackens, descends and whitens, waxes and wanes, pales and reddens, is born and dies, rises again, then lives eternally.
Summary
Find the center of the Universe. When you have found it, purify it; when you have purified it, dissolve it; when you have dissolved it, cook it; when you have cooked it, ripen it; when it is ripe, fix it; when it is fixed, close it; and thus you will have the Great Medicine.
Deo Gratias
The spirit of the Philosophers seizes a certain terrestrial body hidden in the center of the center, which will be set in motion by the divine power if you know how to be silent and which will then receive the generic influence of the sun and the moon. .
For just as man, created from the earth, does not generate man from the earth, but from himself, and yet takes his nourishment and growth from the earth; likewise, you can generate gold and silver; but they must first be nourished with their original substance, which is this pure matter of which the earth is the nurse and which I will call by its real name: Sulob Suebur.
It is a unique stone, a unique object, which must be collected with care and with joy; but costs nothing. It is not found in apothecaries, for everything one buys in the apothecary has a price, either great or small; what we need is considered useless and sordid; this pearl is trampled on in the street; if you have it, act as I indicated to you in my little treatise: first distill the yellowish water; rain will form; then increase the fire, and the very fetid spirit will follow; it is necessary to dig into this fetidness, and, for that, still push the fire; a very red oil will come out, then white smoke; the fire is increased until all the smoke has gone out; then cooled;at the bottom of the vase is the black, spongy earth, which you will gently separate from the fire, I said.
PRAISE BE GOD IN ALL HIS OPERATIONS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
HERMETIC COMPENDIUM.
Chap. I. True Medicine of the Ancients.
Chap. II. Where should true medicine be taken from?
Chap. III. Of Right Knowledge and the Origin of Diseases
Chap. IV. Of the True Cure and Cure of Diseases in General
Chap. V. In what way diseases should be cured, and medicines
Chap. VI. Universal Medicine and its preparation
Chap. VII. Of the particular way
Chap. VIII. Of the best drugs
Chap. IX. Of the right and true preparation of medicines
Chap. X. Of the difference of medicines..
Chap. XI. The right time to pick medicinal species
Chap. XII and XIII. compound drugs
Chap. XIV. Continuation of the previous chapter
Chap. XV. How one should prepare Universal Medicines
Chap. XIV. From the preparation of medicines
Chap. XVII. From the Gold of the Philosophers
Chap. XVIII and XIX. How to Prepare Gold
Chap. XX. How to prepare the quintessence of pearls and precious stones
Chap. XXI. Howtrue coral essence and tincture should be prepared
Chap. XXII. How Vegetable Stone should be prepared
Chap. XXIII. Animal Stone
Chap. XXIV. Mineral Stone
Chap. XXV. Of Medicine Phalaia and Asa
Chap. XXVI. How one must prepare the Vegetable and the Animal
ANOTHER HERMETIC COMPENDIUM .
Chap. I. How and where diseases come from
Chap. II. Of the healing of diseases
Chap. III. specific drugs _ _
Chap. IV. From the preparation of medicines
Chap. V.Universal Medicine _
Chap. VI. Universal Menstrual
Chap. VII. medical gold
CHEMICAL ANTIDOTE.
Treaty IV. TRIPARTITE PHALAIA
Chap. I. Of Medicine Phalaia
Chap. II. How this medicine differs from others.
Chap. III. What Phalaia the author wanted to talk about.
Chap. IV. In what aspect the Phalaia Animale must appear
Chap. V. Of the use of this Panacea
Appendix. Drinking Triple Gold
Treaty VI. THE GOLDEN PANACEA
Chap. I
Chap. II
Chap. III
Chap. IV
Chap. V
Chap. VII
Chap. VII
Chap. VIII
Treaty VII. THE BIRD OF HERMES
First part. Mercury
Chap. I. Of the beginning of our Medicine
Chap. II. Of the Mercury of the Philosophers
Chap. III. Where and in what place our Mercury can be found
Chap. IV. How to extract Mercury
Part two . Sulfur
Chap. V. Sulfur of the Philosophers
Chap. VI. From the Philosopher's Egg
Chap. VII. How to Extract Sulfur
Third part. Salt
Chap. VIII. Salt of the Philosophers
Chap. IX. Where is our Salt
Chap. X. How Salt is to be Prepared
Treaty VIII. SONG OF SONGS OF SOLOMON
Chap. I. On Universal Medicine
(Following chapters not included)
Treaty IX and following: not included
CHEMICAL THERAPEUTIC: not listed