Nature Uncovered

For Children of Science Only and Not for Ignorant Sophists

By

The Unknown Knight



The Holy Scripture calls the raw material, sometimes a wave and sterile earth, and sometimes Water. The division was made of the upper waters from the lower ones, separating the subtle from the thick, and the light like a spirit from the material body. This work has been done by the Spirit of the luminous body; for the light is an igneous spirit which, by separating the heterogeneous, has driven down the thick darkness of the neighboring region, and is more eminent and more brilliant;and amassing homogeneous and subtle matter, is nearer to the Spirit and kindled it into immortal light and, like an incombustible oil, becoming the throne of the Divine Majesty, it is the empyrean Heaven which is the intelligible world and the material world, as the horizon and the definer of both.

The Spirit and the great Architect of the world began the work of Creation with two universal principles, namely: one formal and the other material, heaven and earth. By the name of earth, we understand the mass of the abyss of waters which were not yet formed; and by the sky is meant the empyrean which, in the order of nature, is the formal principle, though remote;for the spirit of God, which is the splendor of divinity, in the moment of creation having wandered over the waters, that is to say, having spread over the dark and moist surface of the abyss, light immediately appeared, that is to say, the most subtle and most excellent light was formed. And so the first day was done, and the part of darkness lacking light, the night, remained in it. And so the raw material was divided into day and night.

The Lord commanded this light to spread over the nearest darkness, and having driven it out, locked it up, and constricted it below toward the center, the second day appeared, the light immediately embracing all the upper celestial and aerial region; and the same spirit, after having condensed the darkness, threw it down and sunk it into the center of the abyss, and thus the last space of the heavens, which is called air or lower heaven, received light; and this is the third day. Thus the mass darkness which covers the whole mass of the abyss, having been constricted by the space of three days, in the lower region by the light which appeared, has become so thickened, because of the narrow space and compression of the cold,that they have changed into a very great mass and nature of water; and then the firmament was as if tossed in the midst of the waters. And then out of the thickest material of the deep was made the solid and gross body of the earth, the center and core of all the work, and like the pit and the tomb of darkness. From the bowels of the philosophical earth proceed two great operations: solution and coagulation. The first makes the opening of the body and arranges it entirely so as to produce all of a sudden the separation of the parts, and that afterwards, by their mutual mixing, a new body is produced, having drawn, by dissolution, all the impurity which is always more or less in the bodies.

Subsequently, the movement of the Spirit, the waters receded from the surface of the earth by its side, and it appeared all dry and arid, in order that it might grow plants and lodge animals and man; and thus all the earth and the water, in the third day, stopped and ended at a globe, and the light first created was gathered up into the globe of the celestial sun, in order that the more it would be constricted, it would be more effective for the good of nature, to awaken the fire of all the beings of the earth. And this is the work of the fourth day. On the fifth day the birds and fish were taken from the waters, and on the sixth the whole thing was completed in man, the masterpiece of Creation and the miracle of Nature.

And in order for this to be done, it is necessary to notice the center of nature or the central point which is hidden in the said body, which point is never found in the vulgar metals, because they are dead because of the operation of the external fire; that is why it is necessary to look for living ones, which still have their spirits when they are still together in their mines and unwashed; and having found them, they must procure the conversion of their bodies into water, of which they were first made, namely into philosophical mercury, which is a living element and universal Spirit, from which it is defined a reduction of a dry thing into water, which is done only by its fire and its blood, which the Philosophers call Dragon's Tail or Mercurial Water.For every body is dissolved by the spirit with which it is mixed, and thereby is made spiritual. The coagulation is procured by the coldness of the air which surrounds it and by the solidity of the earth which embraces it by a great quantity of fire, that is to say of the corporified universal spirit, and by a continual movement, since, imbibing only drop by drop, it is always necessary to stir so that it goes everywhere, and above all a long patience and maturity of time. knowledge in philosophical mercury, which is a living element and universal Spirit, from which it is defined a reduction of a dry thing into water, which is done only by its fire and its blood, which the Philosophers call Dragon's Tail or Mercurial Water.For every body is dissolved by the spirit with which it is mixed, and thereby is made spiritual. The coagulation is procured by the coldness of the air which surrounds it and by the solidity of the earth which embraces it by a great quantity of fire, that is to say of the corporified universal spirit, and by a continual movement, since, imbibing only drop by drop, it is always necessary to stir so that it goes everywhere, and above all a long patience and maturity of time. knowledge in philosophical mercury, which is a living element and universal Spirit, from which it is defined a reduction of a dry thing into water, which is done only by its fire and its blood, which the Philosophers call Dragon's Tail or Mercurial Water.For every body is dissolved by the spirit with which it is mixed, and thereby is made spiritual. The coagulation is procured by the coldness of the air which surrounds it and by the solidity of the earth which embraces it by a great quantity of fire, that is to say of the corporified universal spirit, and by a continual movement, since, imbibing only drop by drop, it is always necessary to stir so that it goes everywhere, and above all a long patience and maturity of time. which is done only by his fire and his blood, which the Philosophers call Dragon's Tail or Mercurial Water. For every body is dissolved by the spirit with which it is mixed, and thereby is made spiritual.The coagulation is procured by the coldness of the air which surrounds it and by the solidity of the earth which embraces it by a great quantity of fire, that is to say of the corporified universal spirit, and by a continual movement, since, imbibing only drop by drop, it is always necessary to stir so that it goes everywhere, and above all a long patience and maturity of time. which is done only by his fire and his blood, which the Philosophers call Dragon's Tail or Mercurial Water. For every body is dissolved by the spirit with which it is mixed, and thereby is made spiritual.The coagulation is procured by the coldness of the air which surrounds it and by the solidity of the earth which embraces it by a great quantity of fire, that is to say of the corporified universal spirit, and by a continual movement, since, imbibing only drop by drop, it is always necessary to stir so that it goes everywhere, and above all a long patience and maturity of time.

The dissolution is done by the heat of the celestial sun, by the scarcity of air, the too large quantity of humidity and rest, and by a continual movement, until time that nature naturally proceeding has itself completed its work, and it is perfect by a solution and coagulation often reiterated, by which we make sure that water and air are pure and without exciteNature and art exclude from their operations what is external, impure and superfluous. The central nitre takes in only enough water, whether it is pure or impure. The fat of water is never pure, this is why art purges it by a double heat, and afterwards it conjoins it. We must look for a hidden thing, from which, in an admirable way, a humidity and philosophical gold are made without violence and noise, and as naturally and gently as ice is made and dissolved by means of hot water. And this humidity is the thing from which nature produces philosophical gold, and from it all metals and other beings take their origin; and it has nothing more friendly than our water, and having no impurity it serves it as a sea.

The effect of the solution is to make bodily things spiritual, provided that the spirit, by too much fire from the celestial sun, does not go up in smoke because the fire must imitate the nature of the celestial sun in the month of July, so that the remaining water thickens by a soft and slow decoction in black earth, at the fire of putrefaction which is made in the middle of the earth.

Solution makes a fixed body light, and coagulation makes a fixed body light; which dissolution is divided into two kinds, viz., natural and violent.The violent one exhausts the spirit of the thing which one must dissolve, and the natural dissolution opens the pores of the solar body in celestial water, without wetting the hands, by which the seed prepared and sent in its womb, which is the Moon of the philosophers or aerial water, and must be governed by a philosophical fire of continual imbibitions, during 7 months, that is to say 7 imbibitions, and sometimes 10 until this water consumes three parts of itself and it leaves one; and it feeds twice afterwards, on the milk of half of its land, or else on the fat which is born in the udders of its said half, The solution is made of

a crud body of philosophical earth, so that in the end it makes an increase. To solution are reduced sublimation, dissolution and putrefaction.

Subsequent sublimation and evaporation is the conversion of a heavy and humid nature into a light one. The end and utility are threefold: the first, so that the impure body may be imperceptibly purified of its filth; the second so that he receives more widely the virtues of the superiors, which flow continuously; the third, so that by this sort of evacuation it may be discharged of superfluous earth, puts the philosophical earth in a condition to be able to work.

In burial, the water contracts the gravity of the lower ones, so that it remains in them; it is, however, a small thing to do, and does a thing of great value and incorruption.

The philosophical mercury sublimates by itself and not the philosophical earth, because being the lime of the body, it does not sublimate itself, but it must be very well incorporated and united with the mercury to be able to sublimate together.

After sublimation comes fermentation, which the higher ones exercise in the lower natures. Water, however, which cannot remain in the same state, grows fat thanks to the favors of the sky; for as the air is opened to the rising vapor, it receives it as in its palace, where before it approaches, the body, having in some way been converted into spirit, its moist nature is stripped of its weight, so that having received lightness, it may enjoy the privilege of various kinds.However the sun and the other stars, by a continual influence, send and distill the vivifying spirits, and the vapors being collected in it as in a sponge, suck with avidity this spiritual nectar and fill themselves with it; and then afterwards, falling back into the bosom of the earth, they make infinite productions, according to the virtue of the seeds and according to the arrangement of the matrices; and so by the nature of water the other elements are fermented. This leaven is this vivifying Spirit coming from the higher natures into the lower ones, without which the earth would again be barren and deserted; it is the seed of all life on which man lives, namely the fermented air of this vivifying Spirit descended from the stars.Thus fermentation is the multiplication of a lesser virtue into a greater one. This is why it is necessary to distinguish in the Elixir three things: the soul, the body and the spirit. The soul is the leaven or the form of the Elixir, being only one half of the vivifying spirit, embodied with the philosophical subject which one separates to dissolve; the body is its paste or its matter, and it is the other part that is kept to fix its dissolved part; and the spirit is the seat, the mediator and the chariot of the soul, which must dissolve it to serve to nourish its body, which mediator or universal Spirit being removed, there can no longer be an alliance between the body and the soul, since they are two extremes.

This spirit is nothing other than that vivifying liquor which attenuates form and matter, which is sometimes called Sky, Mercury, Dissolvent, Menstrue and Quintessence. And the soul is the union of these two beings, spirit and body, in their pure nature, which must be altered equally together in order to be able to unite, and the third which is the soul is very secret; and it is the union of this first earth with the own living water. Therefore when Leo is thirsty, which is your other dry reserved half, make him drink, lest your body break.

Moreover, the ferment, which is the soul, prepares the hard body and converts itself into its liquid nature; and the leaven is nothing else than the philosophical Sun or Moon;and the philosophical gold which is a body, is never prepared except with fire, which is our mercurial or vivifying water, for the leaven of gold is gold, and the leaven or leaven of iron is making; for every agent acts according to its form, and the alteration is always felt by the nature of the agent, and thus he who cannot reduce two bodies to their primary matter, cannot have any ferment since to have a ferment one must have a soul, and, to have a soul, one must have two pure and united primary matters.

Putrefaction and food have almost the same ways of acting as solution; so that humidity, putrefaction and blackness possess each other, and putrefaction is not accomplished until the nature of the body is not completely resolved into water.It is done by a very long fire, because if something went up, there would be a separation of the parts, which should not be suffered, until the male and the female are perfectly united; for otherwise the mind would be moved and impelled by the heat of the air, by the subtlety of the parts which are composed, and by the lightness of the fire of matter; but it is necessary that the spirits and fix themselves there by a stability of rest, equality of the mixtures, by a long patience and by the maturity of time, nature proceeding naturally in itself in all its works.

Finally, putrefaction is properly the corruption of the philosophers' matter in a secret fire;this operation is called blackening and distillation of the crow's head, so that nature may be perfected from the power in action. It is necessary to dissolve the body and separate it from what arises heterogeneous to nature and purge it, then uniting the pure parts with the pure, the cooked with the cooked and the raw with the raw, all according to the weight of nature and not of matter.



Our composite philosophical body dissolves by heat, and before its composition by cold. We reduce to coagulation: fixation, cibation, exaltation and conversion. For this action are arranged and ordered both, namely: solution and coagulation, by the attraction of the moist and the ejection of phlegm and dead earth damned earth. The faeces therefore, where the earthly faeces from the heat of the water, are destined for the damned lands, for the water grows fat and, thickening by evaporation, turns into earth and rushes to the bottom in impalpable earth. This is why the dirtiest part of the thickest remaining water is fire; so that the dead earth is the earth from which moisture has been drawn and separated by inclination.

Philosophical gold and silver must be dissolved in kind water; all the government is done only by water, to which it is necessary to mix the body of magnesia and to cook it with a light fire until it liquefies and melts; because by the work of water, it is easily reduced to water.

All that must dissolve must exceed in quantity what must be dissolved, and the spirit alone has the right to require over the body when it is necessary to elevate the body; it is necessary that the body exceeds the spirit when it is necessary to fix the spirit. And for this end, he is body to fix the spirit, and he is spirits to dissolve the body. You must therefore mix with your half that you dissolve them three parts of the wet against one of the dry, to make your solvent.

In the beginning, aid your work in solution by the aerial Moon and in coagulation by the philosophical Sun. The first part of what we have said is to permeate the Earth, finish it and whiten it; the other two are reserved to rarefy the white earth and to ferment it and whiten it for the last time.

A small fault whose beginning is a great fault in the sequel; this is why it is always necessary to put the things in the equality of the first weights of each division, so that legality is days in the two, so that as much as water moistens, so much the water decreases. If the water is equal in proportion with the Earth, by a measured heat a new white germ is produced and then red.One must look: first at the preparations which cause the spirits to be attracted to the bodies, and to purge them and cleanse them in their own waters of all their impurities and then to extract them. Secondly, everything that speaks in the composition of weight must be understood of the philosophical earth and water, which are hidden under the name of the body and the spirit of S, of the philosophical Sun and Moon, of Air, finally under several other no . And from this know that there are three parts of water against one part of earth, to form your solvent, in other words your soul.

The water is proportioned by the nature of the body that you want to dissolve so that the coldness of the water does not exceed the natural heat of the dry body, because everything is corrupted when the natural fire of the body does not dominate.

It is necessary to reduce half of the body to water, which is called by the sages Water of sapience, because what comes out of the body resolves is a very clear humidity and a virtue of the dissolving spirit. there are two waters, namely: one solar, which is the coagulated half, and the other lunar, which is the airy water which dissolves this aforesaid half, from the union of which is formed the Mercury of the philosophers their virginal milk, from which is made the white or red stone.

The third philosophical operation is the multiplication, which is done by the solution and is completed by the coagulation, which makes the Earth change into water by extraction and the water into the earth by a sweet decoction, until there appears on the surface of the earth a black color, which black earth is properly an earth element.

Clotting is diverse by the object of the solution; nevertheless it is the same thing, for the spirit does not freeze unless the body is dissolved, nor the body dissolves unless the spirit freezes, and it is the same work.

He who knows the solution of the body by the spirit of the same body, in the first matter, in the congealing of the spirit and in the same body, he is nothing other than the aforesaid solution, that is to say the conversion of the body into black earth, the bleaching of the said black earth and the subtlety of the body into its change into air, and he is ignorant of nothing.

This preparation or first work is childish work and worthy of a man of letters, which is why it is commonly called the work of women and child's play. Whoever ignores it, however, will not achieve his purpose and will not enjoy the fruit of the art.

There are two phlegms; one is an aqueous substance resembling water, and the other an earthly substance like excrement, both material and mixed in the composition of the mixtures with salt, sulfur and mercury. And it is in this first water in which the philosophical sulfur is cooked, which does not engender and increase with it and does not enter the water of mercury, except as moistening the parts.This is why they are not the principles, but at most the bonds, the matrices and the bark of the principles, without which the principles would be sterile because they are of themselves no activity.

It must then be calcined philosophically, so that a new crystalline earth is drawn from it.

This is why they having drawn from the compound these superfluities as much as is necessary, and making a well-regulated mixture, nature does and happily executes her duty for these three operations, namely solution, coagulation and by the ejection of dead earth and phlegm, there arises from these two effects the health of the bodies and the generation of the stone. However, know that of which each simple, if one comes to its dissolution, there is oil and dregs, from which a very effective and effective salt is generated; we must return one to the other and let nature take its course. The real universal medicine.

In a word, three things belong to him and bring him health and life, namely: the Sun, which is the central fire of the Universal Spirit; the Air, Jupiter or the wind, which carries it in its belly; and the Moon, which is the aerial water receptacle of the said Spirit.And as the sun of heaven sends its influences to the lower ones through the moon, so our solar and vital fire, or universal spirit, communicates through the said moon, aerial water, the virtues which it has received from the upper sun in the limbs of the human body, our philosophical subject, that is to say, by a liquor or blood which is there the ferment and the bond of the fire which is universal spirit. Jupiter is the wind or the air; as a medium, which the Ancients hid under so many enigmas.

There is an outer heaven known to astrologers, and another outer known to philosophers. One is up and the other down; the sky which is below is the universal Spirit embodied;but the liquor which engendered the first life, otherwise the radical humor or the cosmic Moon, is above. The lower heaven acts in some way spiritually by a vital heat which the Philosophers call natural heat or the microcosmic Sun, which is nourished by the upper Sun, like our Moon from the celestial moon; whence it is assured that all the principal parts of our human body or philosophical Subject, and all the parts which serve them, have their sky, their stars and their firmament. It should however be noted that the stars are hidden in the principles, in the elements and in the matrices, in which,

Natural heat is a universal spirit contained in the radical humidity, that is to say in the white or red stone, because in the soul, that is to say the universal spirit which has dissolved half of the subject there, are contained all the spiritual virtues; and in the body, that is, in the other half of the white or red stone, are contained the bodily virtues. Thus he who knows the sky and the earth of man, or philosophical Subject, to know the soul and the body, possesses universal knowledge. The radical humidity reduces the particular spirit in its natural point when it is not free in its functions, by the universal to which it contains in itself, because the like healed by the like.

In general, universal medicine, which is the true potable gold or universal Spirit, or medicine of all things, is a certain remedy in all diseases. For as all the diseases which are born in man have not so much humor as excrement and superfluity of blood, they must be cured by our drinking gold, because of the natural sympathy which it has with our radical humidity; and therefore it is the philosophical Nitrogen which cures all diseases, having the faculty to cure any infirmity whatsoever.

The radical humidity and the sky of the philosophers, restoring nature to its own strength; it is heaven earth remnant from heaven heaven, for that which is according to its nature is retained by its like. It is the unknown herb that gives life;it is this celestial palace, it is this oil of the medicinal sun.
There is in the human body, in other words philosophical subject, a substance of a celestial nature unknown to many, which does not need any medicine because it is medicine itself, which, being overwhelmed by the corruption of the body, is delivered not by its opposite, but by its similar, and this by peace, by expelling its opposites.

The essence of our vehicle-drawn gold is the sky of the philosophers in which, as in the sky, all the stars are conjoined, in the body of man what the Sun does in the world.
In this essence there is nothing left; if not the tincture of philosophical gold, leaving the earth at the bottom of the vessel though whiter than snow.

Moreover, this elixir of life is of such virtue that, by its smell, the souls of the dying are stopped, so to find it, one must not stop in the external or universal elements, but in the internal ones and in the nature of the bodies, in which is the internal spirit which is the whole foundation of life and medicine. He is also called a King whose body is red, white feet and black eyes. It is composed of two waters: one the light Stone and the other fixes it and hardens it. If you can't cook when crisp in the air of the Vivid Moon, you'll probably miss it. You must take what is and what cannot be seen: this is called the philosophical dewwater, from which is drawn the philosophical saltpetre, by which all things know each other and grow.

The body is nourished not by the body, but by the common life which is the universal vital and spirit, like food. That is why man is not nourished by food or drink, but by that vital fire, which is hidden in them, which easily joins the natural, because of the homogeneity it has with the vital fire of the human body, since they are one and the same.

The philosopher's stone is nothing else than a certain quintessence, or celestial or simple nature, and fifth substance of the elements, which has various names, like the incombustible oil of the philosophers, oil of Talc, their Sulphur, their Elixir, their Agents, sometimes taking their origin from Saturn, Mars, the Sun, Venus and the Moon. It is named after the elements, Water, Wine, Blood, Milk and Sperm.It is also called Green Lion, because it has the power to change the fixed into the volatile and the corporeal spiritual. It is also called Stinking Throat, because of the bad odor it exhales from the impure body in the first distillation, as the said philosopher's stone is also called a white smoke which is condensed in front of the red tincture; this is where it is called Virginal milk.

The Matrix is ​​the center of the Sun or Moon, celestial as well as terrestrial, and to speak more plainly, it is our Magnet, says Sendivogius, otherwise our Steel; and Hermes tells us that the sun is her father and the moon her mother, and that the wind carried her in her womb. The vulgar air spawns and makes appear this magnet, and this magnet spawns and makes appear the philosophical air where the mercury of the philosophers, who is the son of the Sun and the Moon, by the force and the attractive virtue of this philosophical magnet or this magnetic steel which is in all places and at all times .It is this alkali salt called Armoniac and Vegetable salt, hidden in the belly of Magnesia, because by a magnetine and occult virtue, she attracts to herself the son of the Sun at the same moment that she wants to return and resume her natural existence. It is in this beginning that we will experience the greatest difficulties, because we must look for a thing which is not and which is not found in the three kingdoms of Nature, because it is not visible and is not found formally neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor below; it is diffused everywhere but it does not exist in any particular place, nor in a determined subject; the industry of the Artist must serve as wise women to draw formally from the entrails of nature your Adamic Earth;

It is also called the terrestrial being or center because the Earth being its nurse, it acquires the virtues and qualities imprinted with the terrestrial nature, and nevertheless is like a dust of silty water, or rather like that slimy greenish glue semen under which frogs brood, because the root of all things is green, says Razis. And Moses says that this secret occult Adamic Earth is this celestial virgin who appears to the eyes of everyone, disguised under an old and dirty cloak, but who has never been able to suffer the gaze of men in her corporeal nudity, except the true Children of Science.

Knowing that the Sun and the Moon of the sky, with the cooperation of the other celestial bodies, will greatly help you to produce this Adamic Earth formally; but they will not do everything;it is therefore necessary to have recourse to these two celestial and sovereign directors of the middle nature, which are the sun or the universal spirit, and the Moon or aerial Water. So it is an average thing that you must find, since it must be of body and spirit, of the visible and the invisible, of the celestial and the terrestrial.

for it is nature which makes this first philosophical matter; it is she who makes this viscous, celestial and glorious water, and not our art, and it is our Adamic Earth which is this blessed naturing nature, which engenders all things, in which alone the whole magisterium consists, and to which nothing extraneous should be added ; but only in the first operation one must remove from it all superfluous materials, especially since in this single material all things necessary for this art are contained, except the solar or lunar ferment which are the universal spirit attracted by the Stone to the white or to the red, which will only be added at the end of the white or red work.And consider that by the attraction and rarefaction of water and air, the heavens and the universal world were made. And this water necessary for this work is such that no one can live or beget, and of which no one can lack. except for the solar or lunar ferment which are the universal spirit attracted by the Stone to white or red, which will only be added at the end of the white or red work. And consider that by the attraction and rarefaction of water and air, the heavens and the universal world were made. And this water necessary for this work is such that no one can live or beget, and of which no one can lack.except for the solar or lunar ferment which are the universal spirit attracted by the Stone to white or red, which will only be added at the end of the white or red work. And consider that by the attraction and rarefaction of water and air, the heavens and the universal world were made. And this water necessary for this work is such that no one can live or beget, and of which no one can lack. This Spirit of the world is a spiritual external Emanation and a divine virtue, clothed with a celestial humidity which the Philosopher makes corporeal, condenses and congeals in the common gold which is the center and the core of each being, so that it may be more perfect and more multiplying.

First, one must resolve half of the white or red earth into water, which is the Mercury of the philosophers, and dissolve the other half of the body of the philosophical Sun or Moon; they are consumed there so much that only the tenth part remains of it (of the body), with the other part which was already in the solvent; and this remaining subject will be your wet radical of the metals. Then take the water of nitre and half and of our earth, which is our aforesaid philosophical Mercury, and which is a stream and a living wave when it has dissolved its subject;therefore take clear water from it and add the other part to it, which from its moist white or red radical, dry and clean, to the fire of putrefaction by burying it in the earth, having soaked it little by little and with great judgment, for one should never soak only equal weight, but we should only throw our liquor one after the other ; and our imbibitions of equalities will last until the alterations and colors of the material appear like the tail of the peacock. Govern its operations by preparing and digesting until this diversity of colors disappears and the color green appears. And when you see in the bottom of your vessel ashes of brown colors verging on red, open the vessel, take some on the point of a knife which you will put on red-hot iron;and if it stains, have first of our aforesaid philosophical water or mercury, of which you will reserve as much as the first time of this present preparation; cook one more time at the first roasting fire. And because you have nine, imbibitions with our menstruation or universal Spirit of the world on our ashes, this one increases with each imbibition. And yet each time the solvent must weigh as much as the dissoluble. So dissolve, distill and rectify from the sphere of the Moon, the part of our white or red stone as many times as it will take to furnish you with enough of a philosophical Mercury to be able to calcine nine times the Sun or the philosophical Moon; by nine deuces each time.the part of our white or red stone as many times as it takes to supply you with enough of a philosophical Mercury to be able to calcine nif times the philosophical Sun or Moon; by nine deuces each time. the part of our white or red stone as many times as it takes to supply you with enough of a philosophical Mercury to be able to calcine nif times the philosophical Sun or Moon; by nine deuces each time.

There are two fires, the first or that of the first operation is a fire of a single continual degree which surrounds matter, and it is the imbibition in equal weight of your said Mercury. The second is a natural fire which is the own ardor of the white or red stone, which digests the liquid matter and fixes it;this is the government of fire if you understand the nature of the said fire, which is the central ardor of the concentrated universal spirit. There must be a vessel of nature which is the fixed universal Spirit and the same unfixed. The vessel of the first work must be round, and the second must be a little smaller like an egg. But on all things, know there is only a fire of nature, that is to say a universal spirit; and everything that does differently is done by the different situation of places. There is also only a vessel of nature,

If you apply your mind to penetrate something, always consider all that it has created in it to bring out what is hidden in the shadow and remove the shadow that hides it.

Consider the simple cloud water and how it contains in itself what the world has, namely the stones, the salts, the air, the earth, the fire, although yet it appears only as simple water.

Judge the same of all things, and what the eye cannot comprehend, the mind of the Sage comprehends, considering a common matter but not in a common way. Take whose very pale son and unite him to his white sister, and of this there shall be formed a third, half of which you shall resolve into water and present it to them to drink, for it shall be for them a drink of love, because by the benevolence of consent it joins things to things;and pour them wine from the same udders until the pure ones suit the pure ones, otherwise they would produce things which would be dissimilar to them, since of each preparation it is necessary to dissolve half in order to soak its other half.

And gold, or general virtue concentrated in particulars, draws its general to itself, just as the magnet draws iron, and each thing its like, so that by their union you may have a happy outcome.


General rules concerning the matter of the Stone.


The first matter is found everywhere, fills everything and multiplies everything; by whatever name it is called, be it lead, salt, arsenic, gold, it is always the same thing. Always mingle natures with natures, and if there is anything contrary to nature, it is a necessity and to separate it, so that nature may be like nature. Do this with fire and not with the hand and if you do not follow nature you will work in vain.

Let the philosopher know the conversion of the elements, and make heavy things light and light things heavy, and let him imitate nature, which is quite simple, in its path. This is why they must take more from the imagination than from work and facts. Every creature uses it, but invisibly. All things are made of it in this world and live in it, in which there is nothing properly, but it is a thing which mixes with all things. And all generation takes place in the male and the female; but because of the distinction of the three kingdoms of nature, the four-legged beasts are born in one way and the worms in another. For although the worms have sight and hearing, they still reproduce by putrefaction, and their place is the Earth in which their seeds putrefy.

He who works outside the salt of the philosophers, which is their Mercury, as in grasses, animals, stones or other subjects than the Sun and the Moon which are covered with the sphere of Saturn, he is wasting his time, his good, his trouble, because he is working on a matter that is foreign.

To seek solitude in order to remain with Diogenes, hidden in his barrel. Learn in this solitude how to draw the wonderful water in which, if you put the fruits of the solar tree, you will see them consumed and improved. It is an eau de vie which has an intrinsic fire which, being aided by a continual fire, burns the three parts of its body. She is everything, and no one lives without her.And this one is very good, which is drawn by the force of our heat which is in the belly of the ram.
It is a great venom before it is well cooked, but after a suitable cooking it is a great medicine. It gives 29 grains of blood, and each grain gives 864 fruits of the solar tree. It increases first to 10, then to 100, and then to 1000 and then to 10,000, etc.

Also, in our work, the mother of things is our water, and all that comes from it comes from scion putrefaction like worms.

This is why the philosophers say that there is a phoenix and a salamander, because if they were produced from the conception of two bodies, it would be subject to death, and because they only revive each other, the first body being destroyed, another appears because death is nothing else than separating one thing from another.

The water must be ten on the other hand one of the body, to make the stone, and mingled the natures with the natures.

In this work, it is necessary to excite the fire which God has enclosed in the center of each thing, which nature sometimes does of itself, and sometimes aided by the industry of a good artist, by purifying all impurity by fire.

The stone participates in the four elements, invisible, but known by their effects. Yet it is the same thing, the same substance, the same root and the same nature.

The metals are born in the earth from a sulphurous smoke that acts in the aqueous and airy humidity, which is quicksilver, compliant and watering it until it arrives at the last purity, of preparation and cooking of gold, and this happens in a thousand years.

Mineral fire is water and fire that is not fire.So take the fire and measure the air, mortify the water and resuscitate the Earth. In the work of mastery, all that is needed is a vessel, a furnace, a disposition. If nature conceives when it has begotten, the child must be fed until it can endure the fire. Do not give a foreign nurse to this little child, but let him suck his mother's breasts; for as he was nourished in his bosom with his blood, so he must be nourished, by nature, with blood pushed from the mammary veins, circulated and rectified in a suitable proportion. His limbs and slumber will be liquefied with sweat, and afterwards he will grow little by little, and then he will want a royal meal and will become King stronger than the king and will fight alone against a thousand.

Who only knows how to destroy gold, so that it is no longer gold, that is to say, to destroy it and reduce it to its first matter, that one has reached the secret.

The work of various being completed and the sun being raised in the sign of Aries, prepare your leaves which need a great preparation there, because the stone of the philosophers naturally introduces into imperfect metals the qualities and the form of gold. Ordinary gold possesses, in the three families of nature, the uniform and the qualities of gold. This is why they must be taken from him and not from anyone else;and as such as he is he is not perfect for himself, he must be perfected for others by something more subtle, more active and more spiritual than himself, being homogeneous with him, containing eminently his form, or the power to receive it, or to be able to determine it for him.

Beware that the universal spirit of the world is the raw material of the philosophers, which alone can multiply the seeds of particular natures, and even nourish the common gold, animate the vegetation; and it is she who communicates and furnishes the germ of true generation.

Hermes calls this primary and universal matter the Moon, and his followers have called it the bath of Diana, the azotic and primordial hiléal water;and Hermes also calls it the first and universal form of the Sun, and his disciples call it Diana or Nature, combustible sulphur, the general Spirit of the world which, in the first creation of the world; was carried on the waters.

Prime matter and prime form are both really one and the same substance, and are indeed inseparable from each other and can only be separated by reason. This is why the invisible Spirit, which is internal, of the hileal and azotic Water will be the form and the agent; the external of the same Water, the moist and airy substance, or Quintessences which sometimes appears to the children of the Art, as a vapor and sometimes as a water, will be matter and patient, namely both a moist substance.The spirit being covered with it, both are the universal soul of the world which, namely form and matter, nourishing and multiplying all things, when they are stopped at the seeds of individuals.

From this universal Water came the forms of individuals, and after the consumption of the world, they will reunite there.

The soul of the world is a Mercury and a solvent with which gold must be dissolved without violence, and from their union will not be born the Salamander and the son of the Sun.

Gold can never conceive and is quickened by the general soul of the world, that it is not resuscitated from death unto life, that it is not vegetating and that the peacock's tail does not appear of all kinds of colors, the dominant green, which is followed by black purple, not in matter, but of matter.This operation stops after the animation, the calcination and the dissolution of the vulgar gold in philosophical water.

In the first operation, we find the soul of the world by its by the separation of the elements, namely the fire from the earth, the light from the fixed, the subtle from the thick, the pure souls from the impure bodies. For in gold there is a subtle spirit penetrating the soul of the world, the salt and the balm of the stars, which being united together make one mercurial liquor and water.

In the second operation, the prudent artist fixes the general soul of the world in common gold, and purifies the earthly and immobile soul. In this so-called operation, the putrefaction, which he calls the crow's head, is very long.This is followed by a third multiplication by adding the philosophical matter or the general soul of the world.

A third operation is perfected by fermentation, which is a three-day work, as they call it.

The fourth is fine gold by the projection of the stone on imperfect metals. So if you have two parts or substances, one of which is material and can be determined, namely the soul of the world, the other part is determining and formal, namely common gold. And of these two one composes the universal medicine, the panacea, or stone of the philosophers either with white, or with red.

All our operations consist of coagulation and dissolution; because it is necessary to dissolve the body of gold for the red Work and silver for the white Work.

To dissolve gold is to spiritualize it and make it light. To coagulate the soul of the world is to freeze the soul of the world fixedly in silver or in gold. Nature's solvent must always be a coagulant. Water is the universal matter of all things, and the Spirit or the fire of nature has been the general form whose union suffices for all.

Gold and silver are made alive when, having lost the external forms, they are animated and vivified, and they lose the said forms by the Mercury of the philosophers who vivifies their nature to active, or humid natural of the small world, because gold it the principle to make gold, like fire to make fire. The form or agent of this art is the seed of gold;patient or matter is philosophical Mercury, or otherwise nature itself, the soul of the world, or celestial, solar, and lunar Water, which cannot be drawn by industry from any substance of the three families, but from the rays of the sun, by admirable philosophical industry.

Gold and silver are the magnet stones by which the mercury is drawn from the celestial bodies, and this life-giving liquor or the air, so that the radical humidity of the individuals of nature may be preserved and multiplied, for the particular seed attracts the general in the same way as the magnet attracts iron and everything its like.


Chemical Science.


In Esdras, book four, it is said that gold is made in dust.The final object of chemistry is love, and the formal object is a just and equal mixture of the four elementary qualities, resolving and coagulating everything by means of fire, where two natures are needed, namely one red and the other white, one light and the other fixed. It is employed in this single point of joining the dry to the humid by coagulation and by solution. The wet is a liquid spirit which is purified of all filth, the dry is the body of each thing and its prison, the virtues of all things are retained, so that their natural spirits may freely imprint their forces and actions on them; and thus it is necessary to know how to free the natural Spirit from their irons, from their chains, by separating the pure from the impure and the spirit from the body,

We must follow and imitate nature, which is simple, secret and patient, constant and devoted to a single thing, and adapt the way of acting of art to that of nature, always producing a being by its like, sometimes making like it separations. So he will know that animal life depends on the air, for there is a hidden meat of life, which we call dew by night and by day a rarefied water, whose frozen invisible Spirit is worth more than all the universal earth.

Ezra admired a trinity in two things: it is this chain of gold which binds not only the whole universe, but also all the animals and each number of them, in length, width and depth, weights, numbers and measures. And all three kingdoms are related by Salt, Sulfur and Mercury. But he who ignores the weight, he knows nothing.This is why man is obliged to worship God according to the ternary number. It is necessary to know internal, external and essential. The epitome of each is the fixed male and active sun, and the constant, female and patient moon, by which, by means of the seed of the air, everything in this world is perfected for the usefulness of man, not only externally but also internally, by the first man created from the four elements is like the epitome of it, from which it is said Microcosms.

From there it follows that man has an affinity with the elements and with all their fruits without which he cannot live. For what man can live without air, water, earth and fire? So they must use it until the end of the world.Thus gold being the fruit of the seed and of its Element, it follows that gold and its seed, were created for the man, not to eat it like a coarse and daily food, but to use in medicine, to acquire by living a long health. And since God has given medicinal and signal virtues to imperfect metals and minerals, he is very certain that he will not have refused the same virtues, and even more excellent, to the more perfect metals, which are silver and silver. Physicians agree that gold gladdens the heart,

So if anyone wants to prepare this medicine to preserve the human body from decay and corruption, and this medicine must be prepared from the most perfect creature;and as there is nothing more perfect than the seed of gold, because it has not yet obtained the metallic force, gold is not yet a body, a universal medicine must be prepared from it. Now, if this seed of gold is to become medicine useful to man, and to metals to change them into gold or silver and restore them to health, it must be made by a generation more sublime than the natural state, as we have said before, and its essence must be more powerful, more stinks, more perfect, more constant, more fusible and more subtle than gold itself, having to be shining like carbuncle shining at night, For if man can only resurrect after having returned to his first matter, which is the earth from which he came out, then he will come out clothed in a transparent celestial body, penetrating and piercing

.Likewise gold cannot be multiplied without being regenerated, in which regeneration it multiplies; and each multiplied part, regenerating it all new like the other, multiplies itself infinitely like the seeds of all beings. It is only necessary to acquire this seed and to order the celestial soul and the spirit to it.


Actions and mysteries of art.


Light and darkness, form and matter, male and female, Sun and Moon, agent and patient are one and the same.

Form and spirit, the soul of the world taken abstractly, is the raw material of the world and chaos before all form. The Spirit of the world, taken concretely, includes the soul of the world and the first matter after it has formed.

The fire of the universe, the arch of the world, the Spirit of the world and of nature is the same thing. The natural heat of each mixture, or else the fire, the particular spirit taken abstractly, is a ray of fire from nature, or from the celestial Sun, from the soul of the world taken abstractly. The radical humidity is the most subtle part of the raw material brought into action by the form of the universe. The first nature is of two kinds. The pure is active, as that which is put into action by the soul is drawn from filth; and the impure are the sludge or the phlegm. The humid radical is a balm of the mixed containing the balm of nature, composed of heat, fire or specific spirits, with a small part of the subtle raw material and is purified.

This humidity includes three principles of the mixture: mercury, sulfur and salt, which are known by the solution and not by the composition, because that belongs only to God. In the solution of the mixture, too great a fire being kindled evaporates the sulfur and the mercury; remaining there only the salt, which is found in the ashes, which then taken up again, nor in a suitable matrix, from being fixed it will be volatile. So, in the mixed, and there are three things: the body that we see, the spirit, the most subtle part of the raw material reduced to action, and the soul which is composed of both, namely the fixed and the volatile. The body with regard to the conservation of the mixed and its increase;the gazing spirit of man for whom all was made, and it is a ray of aerial light and already contracted by the sun, and which was created from the beginning.

Water and Earth are the matrix of things; there are sort of seeds: the entrance and the exit. The input is that substance which has been cooked many times, which changes into our substance. The outcome is purer and reserves itself in a vessel for generation.

The semen dissolves by the sun of menstruation. The mixture is more impure if it retains its matrix which is the source of impurities.

The common sun and moon are common gold and silver. One is used at the Work for the red and the other for the white.The Sun and the Moon taken in this sense are active and masculine, which determine the nature, or the Moon of the philosophers, as passive; this Moon, which is the woman of nature, is really the Spirit of the world, which, because it is assembled by the spirit of gold from silver, is said to be female or patient, which dissolves the spirit of gold, as the woman does of the seed of man.

Food is made of the spirit that is in the food, or else of the radical moisture and the natural fire which together compose the balm of nature.

Air is the chariot of the Spirit of the world, and it is called the sustaining of fire because it requires a spacious place suitable to its rarer and more spiritual nature.

Bright gold is a red sulphur.

Bright silver or bright moon is called white sulphur.

Driftwoods have no good ashes because their salt, which by its nature is detergent, has been too much dissolved by water.

God created all things from raw material; nature creates and multiplies the things of the second matter that philosophers know.

Each element is in its sphere and one cannot be without the other.

Motion causes heat; heat stirs water, the movement of water causes air, which is the life of all living beings.

There are two principles which are the beginnings of all things: the patient water, and the agent heat which is mingled in the seeds and with that same humor which, with the specific idea, gave the beginning to the generation of each thing.

The operations of nature or are the shadow in many things, and even it is not visible, whatever it acts visibly; for it is a light spirit which does its work in the body and through the bodily organs. His knowledge serves to know the proper and nearest places, so that things join together according to nature, and so that the semblance acts in its likeness and that nature also does its duty.

Agent and patient, well proportioned in generation, are nature loving nature, and male and female conjoined together, mercury and sulfur drawn from one root and conspiring to one end.

Nature is a universal mother, who has breasts full of the milk of the general spirit which accomplishes the whole magisterium by one way, by one same thing, by one same dissolution and by one same act.
All that is contrary in the circumference of the circle is also found in the center of the same circle collected in potency; for example the Light, which is spread everywhere, is united in the sun. Everything joins with its like and flees its unlike as its enemy.

The separation of the pure from the impure is the separation of the spirit from the body; it is certain that God has created nothing which is visible, which is not invisibly gathered together, including some creatures, so that, by what is gathered together in one, we arrive at what is infinitely separated into many.

This is all gold is called the sun, because the rays of the sun, which are as if extended to infinity, are gathered into one in the body of gold.

When you will hear about three circles in this Science, you must hear three principles: Salt, Sulfur and Mercury, Body, Soul and Spirit the three kingdoms of nature: vegetable, animal and mineral.

When we speak of the nine eagles, we mean the celestial globes which send their influences to the Earth, like arrows, so that the spirits returning on high may still be made fruitful.

The semen of metals is no different from the semen of other things, namely a moist vapor.

That the artist flees all circulation, calcination and reiteration of no value and useless in a hard thing, given that it is everywhere soft.

Do not seek the first material, but the second only, such however as it is conceived it cannot change, so however that where nature ceases in perfect metals, art begins.

Gold is engendered from nature ordinarily on account of the humidity of the places which has so vaporized and embraces it, that the Sun of heaven preparing, makes a greasy clay which potters use and from which gold is engendered.

All water freezes by heat if it is with the spirit; she is frozen with cold if she has no spirit. He who knows how to freeze water by heat and unite the spirit with it, he can boast of having found a treasure more precious than gold.

Cause therefore the spirit to separate from the water and putrefy it, and there appear a speck afterwards having cast off the filth, bring the spirit back from above into the water and unite them together, and it will sprout a branch and a form unlike its parents.

Those are mistaken if they dissolve and corrode with strong waters the Saturn, the Moon and the Sun, and then conjoin them to bodies is heterogeneous; as if a man could be gotten from a dissected and corrupted human body, in which the seed is spoiled.

Everything multiplies in the male and in the female, not by the division of the sex, but by their natural conjunction.

No one has ever been able to know the raw material. Put the second matter in a suitable place, and the easily operating nature will be begotten, it will be a thing made of the form of the seed.

As the thing begins, it ends. Of one are made of and of two a third, and no more. What is seen in God unitrine; and so the world is made and so will end.

Nothing is created from one except God. Let it therefore suffice for man to produce a thing which is useful to him.
The sperm is therefore multiplicative, not by the second matter, but by the first matter which is not seen, which is hidden in nature in the Elements, the second sometimes appearing to the sons of Nature and Art.

The first matter of the Elements is a central point which it is impossible to multiply without then; but the second nature, which is the woman of metals, is known only to children of Science.

The woman does not differ from the man, she comes from the same seed and both are born in the same matrix, and nothing was missing but digestion.And as matter is purer in blood and in salt, so the Moon comes from the same seed and womb as the Sun, but the womb had more water than boiled and digestible blood, according to the time of the celestial Moon.

In the sky, the virtues of the planets do not rise, but descend. And experience shows us that Venus cannot be changed into Mars. For the same reason Jupiter is easily changed into Mercury; the Sun mingles with all, but it is never augmented or favored by the lower ones. It is easy to change iron into copper, Jupiter into Mercury, Saturn into the Moon; and he who knows how to make these changes well according to nature, has found a great treasure.

Moreover, there is a certain metal which has the power to consume the other metals, and it is so almost like water and like their mother, to which only the humid radical of the Sun and the Moon resists, to make them better: it is called Steel, and if gold joins eleven times with it, it sends back its seed and weakens it almost until death; then he conceives and begets a son clearer than his father.

Finally, when one puts the seed of the Sun already born in his womb, he purges it and makes it much cleaner to conceive priceless fruits.

There is another like Steel, self-created by nature, and this Steel is the true principle of the Work which so many seek and so few find.

Let the Artist stir Nature, and let him know that gold can give the seed and the fruit in which it will multiply.Let him try nothing without nature, which must be helped and followed: that is the surest and the best path, and that is all.

The medium for helping nature is fire, the heat exciting the frozen spirits in the bodies, so that nature can operate; this is done by the solution.

Gold submits to all things, that is to say the very pure substance of sulphur, mercury and salt, like a balm or a liquor, like the same gold.


Christian chemistry.


The center of the universe, which ceaselessly gives movement, and which remains motionless, represents the image of God.

Nature's desire to perfect herself infinitely is not in vain.It will always be inherently imperfect, and will receive its perfection in its center, which is God, who represents the unity of God.
Thus, when the virtue of natural heat produces the radical humidity which is of the same nature with it, it is joined and united by an indissoluble bond. This wonderful productive power in creatures shows the infinite generative power of God, by which the Father engenders his Son, who is equal to him in everything except in paternity.

The universal world, following the example of God, of which it is the mirror, produces in another all its essence, as if it were the Word of its understanding, namely the natural heat and the humidity of the name of which is found in the salt of nature, producing in this salt a certain dryness by a mutual love that unites them together from a unity of essence; and this link is not different from the two, although distinct.

The radical dry precedes the action of the natural igneous heat in the humid, which is only pure love and a real bond between the two. The fiery heat in the source of nature represents God the Father; the moist first begotten from the heat can be compared to the sons of the Eternal Father;and the radical sec, which is the bond of the two, to the Holy Spirit who is the love of the Father and the Son.

These three things are different and are one. For the salt of nature is three and one.

In the matter of the salt or mercury of the world, the hot is the first in origin; the moist is not created afterwards, but takes its beginning from the hot as from its origin, and the salt is said to be the third because it is produced and emanated from both.
This is where it comes from that the salt or mercury of the world is called Ancients: treacherous and worldly, whose virtue, considered when it is still in the air, has been called Jupiter, in the water Neptune, in the Earth Pluto.So that the sulfur of the philosophers is our fiery heat, their  our humid and their salt our dry, which are our first productions, as well as our three divine persons are the first principle of all created beings.

All these things are one, and three, and these three distinct from one, as it is one from three. Thus each originates from three, and by blending the ternary originates from one. These three and one created do not establish several forms, because they would be three in titles, but they only constitute it a mercury of life which is the foundation of all nature: thus in all our work. We have a father, which is the Sun, a son, which is the Mercury of the philosophers, and the universal spirit, which is the soul.And the life of the world is the love and the bond of both, which three things, although really distinct, are nevertheless not the same essence and solar nature, whose son and spirit proceed from the Sun who is the father, the true mine and original source, finally the mercury of the philosophers.

The raw material, mercury, can be said to be in a way all-powerful, because everything that is in the order of nature takes its origin from it. Matter is corruptible, and so indeed, in its own way, whence salt, according to the language of almost all nations, is written in three letters and was deemed holy and sacred to the Ancients. And no sacrifices were made without salt: this is why every victim is sprinkled with salt and fire in the Gospels.

The world is full of the vital Spirit which is called the energetic Force of all nature, and the seed of the sky and of the stars and of the Elements; and yet he clothes himself in the form of the elementary bodies. However the light of the sky and the stars does not lose the species, so that it acts; but it descends from the Sun to earth, at the idea of ​​the Son of God in Mary's womb, to take an elementary body without leaving the company of warmth, which is its father, nor the spirit of the world which it fills; he only receives a lower nature in the center of the salt, as in the bosom of a virgin earth, and after giving birth he does not lose his virginity.

The salt of the world is produced from the fiery heat of the Spirit of the world, and in its production it is free from every kind of elemental corruption. Salt is the mother and daughter of the World Spirit who preserves the world.

The salt comes, in some way, to be called virgin before and after its birth from the Spirit of the world, which receives no foreign seed for the generation of its son, but the virtue of the spirit which fills it, in order that it produce and introduce the nourishing substance to all nature.
The son of salt is the spirit and the body which participates in the celestial and elemental nature, and thus he is of two natures like Jesus Christ.

In the same way the Sun, who is the great Father of metals and of nature, sends his only son Mercury, the savior of metals, to take an earthly body in the bowels of a virgin earth, which conceives the son of the Sun only by the operation of his Spirit and of Life.

The death of Jesus Christ seems to be represented in the death of the Spirit, and that is when he corporifies; for then this son of the Sun gives his life for the metallic restoration, purging the metals of their original imperfections and impurities, by the admission of his royal blood.

Death is not the annihilation of the body, only its purification. It is the stripping of the old body, and the renewal of nature. Thus the death of men is the way to arrive at a happy life than the first.

In the death of the mixed, the hot and humid, which are the first, are not separated from the heterogeneous excrement with its radical dryness.

The spirit of the world dies every day when it loses a body there, and immediately it triumphs over death.
Heavenly influences descend into us through the resurrection of the spirit of the world.

The spirit of the world ascends from earth to heaven, and then descends again, and brings us back, like the Holy Spirit, all powers.

There are three things in the mercury of the world: the fiery heat which is called Sulphur; the humid first born which is called Moon or Mercury; and the radical sec which is called Sun, the bond and love of the Sun and the Moon;and the latter, because of his thinness, deserves to be called the Spirit of the world, which descends from heaven in the form of sulfur and fire, which is the natural life by which he sustains his bride.

This spirit renews nature and the face of the earth; which is represented by the character of S, which is a Moon above, a Sun below, and a cross for its base.

They put the original heat in the center, which is the source of the life of the world, which is in the center of everything and which even makes its dwelling in the center of the world, so that it communicates more easily to each thing, as being the heart of the world and its continual source of life.

This crescent is the idea of ​​the radical humidity of the world and of nature, which is the matrix of all things.And because the hot deserves the name of Father of all things, also the semi-circle marks this supernatant humidity in the aforesaid center, and is only an essential part of the moist, being the true female and half of its male, which is useless to generation if not conjoined with the male, who is its sun, and with which it composes a true and perfect circle and at the same time a sun.

The Father of the hot is the Sun, and the mother of the humid is the Moon, the celestial influences being nothing else than the igneous heat of the world with its humidity; and the dry radical, which completes and completes the whole essence of the heat of mercury, is represented by the cross.

The cross below represents and signifies to us the idea of ​​nature and elemental, or the descending celestial influence, and salt the goal of all changes. This is why they put the cross in the lowest parts as a patient, and by which one ascends to all the highest perfections.

We have all taken our origin from the center of nothingness thrown on the surface of the earth, in which there are all kinds of contrarieties, and through the cross we are all united to the divine center in which there is true peace.

The Sun and the Moon are supported in this character of the S, by the Cross from which they receive all power.

Lacroix represents the world by joint and disjoint lines. The top line represents fire, which is the most worthy of all the elements;the lateral lines represent the elements of air and water; and the lower line represents the earth; which four lines, being united in a circle above their center, will remake a new perfect and very complete world in which the squaring of the circle will be perfect.

The angels are pure spirits, and in some way recognizable by the igneous or mercurial spirits of the world, which, though corporeal, are yet the purest of the other parts of the body; and they are created to serve God and he to created nature. But man alone was created for God alone, and everything else is made for the service of man. His body was formed from the very pure part of silt and mercury which is called salt, and from this very matter from which gold and silver come.

The Tree of Life was the source and center of all nature. The fire, purifying the heterogeneous, shows Purgatory very well. And the fire, during the Judgment by purifying the excrement of nature, by universal calcination, the very fire of Hell. And the purity of our stone relates to our immortality.

There are seven Sacraments which represent, in chemistry, the seven instruments by which bodies are purified.

Baptism responds to calcination, in which water and fire are necessary.

Confirmation responds to fixation, making spirits firm in their subjects as well as in their doctrine.

Penance represents putrefaction, by which the mixed are purified.

The Eucharist represents the blessed Stone by which one lives a life prepared by a universal medicine.
Extreme Unction is represented by the Oil of the Sages, which is the virtue of ashes or dissolved salt to purge all things.

The Order like an oil by which, with the ashes of a very perfect salt, is made the Soap of the Sages, from which emerge admirable rays, representing the Sun and the Salt of the universe.

Marriage is represented when the red husband marries the white wife, for the multiplication of the son of the Sun and the Moon.

Thus the creation of the world and the institution of the sacraments have a very great relationship.

And the eternity of the Blessed is represented in the divine Spirit, which expects virtue and efficacy to preserve the human body from all corruption and decay.

Poetic chemistry.


Jupiter changed into golden rain is the first work. The four sons of Saturn are the four elements: Jupiter represents fire; Juno, air; Neptune, mother water, and Pluto, earth.

The y-parts of the generation of Saturn, cut off by Jupiter, signify to us the Spirit or the Sulfur-Essence, which descends from heaven into the sea; from these two came Venus or Vitriol, the principle of philosophical gold and the radical Sulfur of all metals which freeze quicksilver.The scythe of Saturn is the philosophical water which separates the Spirit from the gold of its body. The Hercules of the ancients is the mercury purging and vivifying the Earth, that is to say the Sulfur imprisoned and overcoming Anthea.

The Daedalus is the fixed sulfur; her son is the light sulphur, both emerging from the Labyrinth, that is to say from captivity, for nature, embracing her fellow creature, makes herself free and flies away only when she is sublimed. And Icarus flying high, that is to say too subtilized, his wings having been burned by the sun, falling into the sea, that is to say losing his volatility; he is fixed buried by his father in the sand, that is to say, he fixes himself with him.

Midas means projection powder.Bacchus had taught it to him because the water that dissolves is called wine and thus wine is made of water, which being well cooked in the bunches, does everything. And the wine is called the blood of the earth.

Python is killed by Phoebus with arrows, because the acting thereby internal excites the external; excess moisture is destroyed. This also signifies the philosophical Sun, the universal medicine which has power over everything and against all venoms.
Typhon is the dry, hot exhalation of the stone in its bowels, which is the form and the agent.

The Gorgon is a humid vapor which is the matter and the matrix;the first, namely Typhoon, is a virtue similar to that of the mineral Vitriol which congeals the mercurys or the humid vapors which they called Gorgons.

Perseus is an active fire which, by a dissolving liquor, cuts off the head of Gorgon, from whose blood is engendered the fixed Sulphur, but not the common. Volatile Sulfur is called winged Pegasus, or flying through the air; these two fixed and light substances, of which we have already spoken, are called by Hermes the Heaven and the Earth, the Superior and the Inferior, which, being uniform and temperate together, heal metals and men.

Aesculapius is taught by Chiron to take the blood of the Gorgons.

Three-headed Cerberus, son of Typhons and Gorgons, are the three substances or the three principles to which and in which, by the heat of the sun, all things are resolved.

The seven-headed Hydra, Scylla with six dogs, are the seven metals between which Mercury is the Dragon who guards the golden apple.

Naiads are living waters.

The larceny of Mercury signifies and the scepter of Jupiter, and it is the absolute power which she acquires by the degrees necessary for her perfection.

The trident of Neptune is the permanent union of the three principles have its subject which in its perfection.

The arrows of Apollo are the tingent rays of the Sun.

Mars Sword is the first color that appears after Corruption as a naked sword.

The belt of Venus is the diverse circle of all colors that ends in red.

The Sun, or pregnant salt, is made fruitful by the life of the Spirit of the world, darting its rays upon the earth, causing the generation and maintenance of all things.

The blood that flowed from the right side of Medusa's head, and resuscitated Hippolytus who had been torn and dragged to Hell by Medusa's horses, and it is also good for all kinds of diseases; but the blood that flowed from the left side of Medusa's head is a very pernicious venom.

The twelve labors of Hercules are the figures, degrees and operations of the Art, which are: first Calcination; second, Freezing; thirdly, Attachment; fourthly the Dissolution; fifthly Digestion;sixthly Distillation; seventhly Subutilization; eighth in Separation; ninthly the Inceration; tenth Fermentation; eleventh Multiplication; twelveth the Projection.

Hercules is the son of Jupiter. He is the Artist born under a good constellation.

Alchmene, mother of Hercules, who is prudence, Minerva who is skill, had him suckled by Juno to obtain immortality. Juno is the aerial nature from which proceeds the nectar which makes everything immortal.He wounds her in the nipple with the blow of a trident, that is to say, he makes the separation of the principles of this airy humor to begin his work, from which come to be born two serpents which made war on him in his cradle, that is to say at the beginning of his work, one of which a serpent is winged and the other without wings. It is the mercury and the sulfur of the philosophers, the male and the female, the Sun and the Moon, both of the same origin and of the same nature and mercurial source which, by the degrees of the Art must be converted into quintessence. These are the dragons whose tails the Egyptians bit to teach us that they must unite in a subject.It is from Gabritiusus and Beya, whose matrimonial conjunction engenders Latona who, pregnant with Jupiter, that is to say celestial influences, will give birth to Diana, the whiteness of the philosophers, who then later serves as a midwife to her mother to give birth to her Apollo who is the color red.

This aerial matter is again the winged doe with feet of bronze and which bore golden horns, which Euriste commanded Hercules to take on the run, that is to say that the matter must be volatile, which nevertheless contains the nature of the fixed which fixes it. It is the golden horns, that is to say the rays of his sulfur, which fix the vivacity of his Mercury.

The river Alpheus is the mercurial water which Hercules uses to remove corruption from the stables of Augeas, that is to say which removes the darkness of matter.

The Stymphalian birds, defeated by Hercules, are the volatile spirits of matter that settle on their lands by the continuation of fire.

The fire-vomiting bulls and horses of Diomedes are the hidden sulfurs of the mineral earth that make Hyppolite's harness subtle. Reyne of the Amazons that Euristée ordered to bring to him, it is the capillary and diversified circle which appears with the decoction of the Elixir.

Antheus is the son of Earth. Hercules three times carried him to the ground, but his mother by touching him redoubled his strength.he wanted to make the head of Hercules the capital of a column in the temple of his brother Neptune. Finally Hercules raised her in the air and, thus deprived of the help of her mother, he suffocated her in his arms. Antheus is the giant who took his origin from rotten Mercury by the mixture of water and the philosopher's Earth.

The defeat of the Pygmies, who wage war only on cranes and who wanted to avenge the death of their father Anthée, are the colors that grow after having traveled for a long time.

The river Achelous is the matter of the Elixir purged of its dropsy and its leprosy or phthisis, that is to say of its foreign water and its earth.It is the mercurial water of the philosophers, which continually changes in nature and form, finally reducing itself to earth, represented by the bull that Hercules conquered and from which he drew a cornucopia, that is to say an Elixir which gave to the Nymphs to multiply.

The Nymphs and Hesperides had in their garden an apple tree whose apples, all of gold, were the dower that Jupiter assigned to Juno when he married her; and an ever valiant dragon was its guardian. Hercules was commanded to remove them to, he does not know where to find him. He consulted the Nymphs, which are the sweet waters, to find the entrance. They sent him back to Nereus, the sea god, who is water all impregnated with fire and light;and by means of Prometheus who is the assistance of the heavens, he discovers to him the place and the secret of putting the dragon to sleep, that is to say, fixing it, in order to carry away the fruits. This dragon is the mercurial water which guards the Hesperides apples, that is to say, it hides within itself the true gold of the philosophers, and their true Sun which, well led, arrests its vivacity, puts it to sleep and fixes it.

Calus was a thief who had three heads; he was the son of Vulcan. He had three heads, that is to say he was the support of the three families, the reunion of Salt, Sulfur and Mercury, which takes all kinds of forms. He is the son of Vulcan, that is to say of fire, because he must extract from another mercury by fire.Hercules the sum of his club, that is to say, fixes it. Hercules draws the wild boar alive from the snow of Erimonte, mountains of Arcadia, which he carries to Euristea, that is to say that the work passes from blackness to whiteness; but before that, Hercules was obliged to draw Cerberus from the underworld, that as soon as he had seen the light of day there, he vomited Laconite, that is to say, he changed himself from corruption into a more perfect nature.

The Nemean lion was the support of the labors and the height of the glory of Hercules.

The serpent Hydra, born of the mercurial water, made the beginning and the continuation of the works by these changes. After this victory, his club became useless to him: the spoils alone sufficed him.

The seven-headed Hydra is the multiplication of his handiwork. Our child who is born in the waters is that mercurial water which is our whole secret. It is the vessel of Hermes which contains all that is necessary for him.

Eurydice is that mercurial land which makes the wish of wise philosophers. She is the daughter of the ocean, from which she was born, that is to say of the waters Orpheus is the learned artist of the waters, but his too much but too hasty, which brought him back.

The Styx is the muddy marsh which rises from the tenth part of the ocean, and from which was spawned the Hydra which Hercules had fought.The serpent which wounded Eurydice is the water which dissolved her and made her Enter the underworld, that is to say, which led her into darkness. Caron is time. The four dark rivers that Orpheus crosses are dissolutions. The Night in its chariot is the tenebrous matter in its chaos; these three dogs are the three principles and Pluto the God of riches.

The chaste Diana sister of the Sun, it is this foliated earth that Actaeon, another reckless, wanted to discover in his bath before she had dried it and fixed it, and on which she took revenge, giving him deer horns on his head, which made his confusion and caused his death.

The Elysian fields are leafy lands.Eurydice, who is found among the myrtles and laurels, represents that vegetating soul which the sky infuses on matter, which grows every day by the affixing of non-mercurial water which whitens it to its perfection.

Orpheus captivates Pluto and the gods, who are the different colors which succeed black and are perfected only by red. He would have drawn Eurydice from the Underworld, if his impatience had not precipitated his work: the excesses of his love made the excess of his fire. Wisdom is time and Prudence is patience.

Daphne, nymph daughter of the river Peneus, is daughter of water and is nothing but ice: she is the mercurial water of the philosophers.Because of the pursuit of the Sun, it is changed into laurel, that is to say, into green color, which enters into its perfection.

Saturn cutting off the sky's genitals, made them fall into the sea, from which came a foam which gave birth to Venus. The nymphs raised this nascent divinity in a sea conch. She had no sooner gone out than she wiped her eyes and her hands to look more beautiful on her arrival on the island of Cyprus. The earth caused the lilies and roses to blossom under her feet, with which the Graces made her a crown; the Hours gave her an untied dress of all colors. Mercury was the first of the gods who impregnated her and she got Cupid. Mars wanted to do the same, but he was chained there and troubled by her Vulcan husband.

Venus is the mercurial water which, flowing from the sky, brings everything it needs. The nymphs that raise it are the fresh waters that wash the earth and nourish it in a sea shell, that is, a philosophical egg. The wet hair that after birth she sponges with her hands to look more beautiful are the humidity that dries out by freezing it. The flowers that the island of Colchos makes hatch on its arrival, are the three mysterious colors, the black, the white and the red which, successively, make burst its glory. The dress of which the hours give him is the purple one that comes to him by the time. Mercury joins her, and they make only one water which produces Love: it is the Elixir. Mars who wanted to enjoy it is an imperfect color between red and black,

The muddy waters of the Flood spawned this poisonous snake Python. Apollo, who alone was destined for his ruin, broke his quiver without doing anything to him; but at last the streams of venom with which the monster was filled, flowing through its wounds, left the body motionless, taking away its life.

The snake Python is matter; it is born from the corruption of the waters; it contains everything it needs and is even the vessel of its perfection. Apollo is the heat of the mineral sulfur whose virtue is to kill and freeze its moist.
The Egyptians show the necessity of the perfection of the circle, in the conjunction of these two extremities, the head and the tail.

Medea had her chariot drawn by two serpents.

Cadmus kills in a fountain the serpent which had devoured his companions, whose teeth, sown and cultivated in their soil, gave birth to men who undid themselves, except for five, who helped him to build the city of Thebes, which is the quintessence.

Aesculapius, to come from Epidaurus in Rome, took no other form than that of a serpent. The mercurial water is this serpent devouring itself, getting pregnant and giving birth to another self.

Narcissus was the son of the river Cephissus and a sea nymph. The prophet Tiresias predicted to him that he would live long if he did not fall in love with himself;and as they had come from a father who were only water, he had no sooner consulted his face in the crystal of a fountain, than he wished his reunion with his principle and, like one dying in the waters, he was converted into a flower which bears his name: and this is the matter of the Elixir.

The hermaphrodite is the son of Venus and Mercury; he was male and his entertainment was the waters; and as he was bathing, a naiad surprising him embraced him, restrained him, and converted him into herself; their two bodies became one, which then carried their two sexes and had only one face.

The matter of the Elixir is male and female;she is the Sun and the Moon, Gabritius and Beya, brothers and sisters, child of a king of an island who are one body, and a son of a king much more powerful than their father was.

Atalanta and were also the daughter of a king of an island in Arcadia; she outstripped anything in strength and speed to run with her. Being ready to marry, she consulted apollo to know which husband she should take, and oracle answered him: flee the alliance of men, because your husband will make that, without dying, you will lose your face. Hippomenes, grandson of Neptune, asked Venus for assistance in his plan: she gave him three golden apples, picked from the garden of the Hesperides.So they both ran at an unparalleled speed, but the beauty of the apple thrown in the middle of the race induced Atalanta to pick it up; she did the same with the other two, which caused Hippomenes to arrive first at the end of her career and made Atalanta the price of her victory. But their eagerness brought out the truth of the oracle, since in an instant they found themselves changed into Lions. This means that the vivacity of the Mercury of the philosophers is fixed by the action of its Sulphur, which is of the same nature and of the same origin as it, and both, converted into Elixir, make the Red Lion of the philosophers.

Climene was also the son of the Ocean and of Thetis, who, pregnant with the rays of the Sun, begot Phaeton who, carried in his father's chariot, that is to say on the mercurial water, was precipitated by a thunderbolt, that is to say blackened. It was given there to the nymphs to purge and wash it, by imbibitions, and were changed into poplar, that is to say, they settled with it.

Cygnus succeeds this metamorphosis; past blacknesses and obscurities, this king, relatives of Phaeton newly whitened, rises on the waters and sings the glory of his death when he sees himself ready to pass into another more perfect and unalterable nature.

Medea, in love with the fires of her new conqueror, destroys her enchantments herself by contrary charms.By a soup of honey, she closed her eyes to the dragon who had not lowered her eyelids, and by the force of her verses, the bulls with ground feet who vomited flames, lowered their necks, submitted to the yoke and plowed the field of Mars, where the plow had never entered. And finally, after so much work, Medea became the price of her victory and the glory of these enterprises. Get to know the Soul of the world to know the subject of all wonders.

Zoroaster taught that the souls of men, being in the heavens, had wings, and that in old age the feathers came to fall from them and they rushed down here into the bodies, and after having returned, they flew back into the heavens.Then his disciples, impatient to return to their abode of bliss, asked him one day what they could use to make them quickly reborn: by wetting them, he told them, in the water which flows from the four rivers which water Paradise on earth. The mixture of water and earth makes salt, that of earth and air makes mercury. Mercury is the spirit and vehicle of food, and sulfur is the form and soul which imparts odor and flavor to the subject.

The Universal Salt makes the body of the Universal Spirit, whose vivifying force is called Phoebus, which is the salt of the air; by the force of the sun's rays, Jupiter; and that which is in the earth, Pluto.

My dear brother, read, meditate and pray to Almighty God, who is the true author of nature, that he make you know it and its effects, and when you know it, it will not be difficult for you to reach the desired end.

Praise be to God.

Amen.

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