PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE On the three Principles, Animal, Vegetable, & Mineral.

OR THE KEY TO THE PHILOSOPHICAL SANCTUARY

VOLUME TWO -
PREPARATION OF THE LAND OF THE PHILOSOPHERS, TO REMOVE THE SALT

SABINE STUART DE CHEVALIER


The Philosophers have never directly indicated this admirable land; whenever they talked about it, they always used allegories, enigmatic similarities. The Egyptians never named it, nor indicated it in any way except by the hieroglyphic figures that they engraved on the marble. The people did not have the slightest knowledge of these characteristics; the Sages, they alone, had the key. All the doctrine which is contained in all the works of Hermes is also contained in the characters which are engraved on the obelisks which we still see today in Rome. The whole process of the great work is represented by the obelisk which is in People's Square in Rome. Everything is indicated there, from the calcination or preparation of the material to the projection.

The square figure of this enormous mass, its pyramidal shape, represents the four elements; all the operations, the time that must be used during cooking, everything is explained there, but in a much more obscure manner than in all the works of ancient and modern Philosophers. For approximately two thousand years that these obelisks have been in Rome, Scholars have endeavored, in vain, to explain these hieroglyphs. All those who know the great work assure that all these interpreters have failed & have not understood what a single figure really means. Only those who possess universal medicine are able to understand them. The ingenious Polyphile has written a large volume, where he designates all the operations with all the details; he indicates the salt of the Philosophers under the name of Polia with whom he wants to marry. He travels across vast countries to find it.

Polia loves Polyphile more than any other mortal, and nevertheless she flees him. Finally he has the happiness of joining her; he declares his legitimate love for her; she has the cruelty to let him die at her feet, to have the pleasure of resurrecting him and then solemnly marrying him. This work is entirely allegorical. What knowledge can superficial readers gain from these allegories? They will see that Polia indicates the salt of the Philosophers from which philosophical mercury must be drawn; but will they be any further ahead for that?

We do not pretend to advise not to read the works of the Philosophers; on the contrary, we assure that it is necessary to read them;

but we add, that we must address God at the same time, and ask him to grant us the light which is necessary for us to arrive at the knowledge of this philosophical land, which is the source of all happiness. By thus asking this knowledge from the Father of lights, with a pure heart and legitimate intentions, to use it for the glory of God, for the relief of the poor, we must have perfect confidence, and we will be enlightened.

When God has granted you the light necessary to know the land of the Philosophers, you will bring it out of its mines around the equinox of the month of September.

At the same time, you will make a pit in an orchard or another place where there is free air. It would be advantageous for this pit to be exposed to the south or at least to the southwest.

It must be about three feet deep, as wide, and a toise long: you will fill it with philosophical earth: you will enclose it with a palisade of planks well joined together to prevent any animal can only go and do its garbage on this earth, to protect it from any other accident; because the surrounding earth must not penetrate into it, and the streams which form after heavy rains must not pass over it. If this happened, the water would carry away the volatile salt, even the fixed salt, and the philosophical earth would lose its virtue; to preserve and increase it, this earth must not be wetted by any water other than that which falls directly from the sky onto the pit.

The philosophical earth being thus disposed, will be abundantly impregnated with volatile salt and all other celestial influences throughout the course of winter, sometimes by dew, sometimes by rain and snow.

Then, around the month of May, or at least six months after you have put the philosophical earth in the pit, you will remove it to put it in wide and shallow earthenware vessels, to expose them during the night to the serene & in the rays of the moon. You will take care to bring them into a room or shed every day to protect them from the sun's rays: you will also protect them from violent winds which would carry away the volatile astral salt with which the philosophical earth is impregnated.

You will continue to exhibit it like this from the first of May until the first of August.

The digestion of the philosophical earth which takes place in the pit during the winter is only to make the matter more perfect: we could dispense with doing it; but it would be necessary to double the second operation, that is- that is to say that we could expose the earth in vases on a terrace from the
month of January, and we would begin to remove them during the day, around the month of May.

When we want to remove the philosophical earth from the pit, where it has spent the winter, it would be essential that it had not rained for fifteen days or three weeks.

If by chance it happens that the spring is rainy, and that there are not three days in a row without rain, we can make a small hut on the pit to protect it from the rain and bring the earth to the point where it must be to remove it.

When extracting the philosophical earth from the pit, this earth must not be too dry or too glutinous; it must hold a happy medium between these two points, which contain the astral spirit: at this time, the water of the sun is enclosed in the philosophical earth, and the water of the moon will descend there in abundance by exposing it to the serene during the months of May, June & July; for then you will have the philosophical azoth, or the land of the Philosophers well saturated with volatile astral salt, fixed central salt of the earth, & celestial balm, which perfumes all plants in the spring season.

As you will not be able to work all this earth at the same time, to preserve it or, to put it better, to make it retain the precious things it contains, you will put it in stoneware pots which you
will close very precisely, to prevent it from drying out. Then take a large glass retort and add enough

of this precious earth to fill two-thirds of the vessel; because if you completely fill the retort, the powerful spirits, which are enclosed

in the earth, having no space to circulate, it would infallibly break with an explosion: then adapt a large container which must also be made of glass and well fought ; a balloon a foot in diameter would be better.

Place the retort on the sand, and distil with a slow fire at the beginning; You will gradually increase it until the sand is red, and you will see all the volatile salt sublimated and attached to the neck of the retort. You will gently loosen this volatile salt with a feather, and carefully close it in a bottle.

Cohob the distilled liquor on the residence; close the vase with a blind capital, & put it in horse manure to ferment, circulate, resolve & digest the material for six weeks, at the end of which you will distill the liquor, like the first time; you will be able still collect volatile salt, but in a smaller quantity than in the first operation.

Add the distilled liquor again as above; close the vase &
put it in horse manure for six weeks, at the end of which
you will distill the spirit & rectify it up to seven times, in a water bath, in a glass still: you will separate the phlegm, & bring up the part of fixed salt which has been volatilized; you will join the whole together, that is to say the fixed salt & the volatilized fixed salt; you will circulate it in a vaporous bain-marie for eight days.

You will then break the glass retort to remove the dead head which must be pounded in a mortar, and extract the fixed salt by leaching it with the phlegm that you separated by rectifying the spirit.

We see, from what we have just said, that the philosophical earth contains everything that is necessary for it; this is why we must never add the slightest thing that is heterogeneous: if that happened, we would lose all the material.

After having thoroughly leached the residue we have just talked about, you will filter
the lye & evaporate it. You will find a fixed salt as white as snow at the bottom of the vase. You will rectify this salt by dissolving it in air & coagulating it several times. You will make it crystallize after the twentieth dissolution & coagulation.

Then reunite this crystalline salt with the rectified mind; observe the philosophical weights and
proportions which consist in giving spirit to crystallized salt, as much as it can drink. An ounce of fixed salt ordinarily absorbs ten ounces of rectified spirit.

Put this mixture of rectified volatile spirits & fixed salt in a
well-lit glass retort, & distill according to art; but be careful not to increase the fire too much at the beginning; because the spirits are powerful and burning: without being destructive, and the glass vase is very fragile. When all the spirits appear to have been distilled, you will increase the heat to distill until dryness.

Then cohob the distilled liquor on the residence, & repeat this
operation until the spirit is converted into a milky liquor, which
will coagulate in cold & melt, like wax, in a gentle,
smokeless heat. The spirits will be reduced to this point of perfection after the seventh distillation; but we must not forget that it is very essential to
constantly cohere them on the same residue from which they came.

To make the liquor more perfect,

After this operation, you will have completed the first part of the magisterium,
which is the most difficult. At this time you can flatter yourself of possessing the raw gold of the Philosophers; the second part of the work is much less painful, because all the work consists of simple benign digestion; but if the work is not so difficult, it takes much longer.

The liquor being well purged of all its earthly and heterogeneous impurities
by means of repeated distillations, dissolutions, digestions & rectifications; after having joined the fixed volatile part with the volatilized fixed part, all you have to do is gently circulate to convert all the material into universal tincture or true quintessence.

You will put part of this liqueur in a philosophical vase
which you will close hermetically and which you will place in a vaporous bath
or in a bain-marie. You will observe that two thirds of the vase must remain
empty; make a graduated fire to digest & circulate the material which
will take all imaginable positions. It will rise and fall,
dividing like volatile atoms, until there is a perfect union
between them and they are all gathered at the bottom of the vase. Some time
later you will see the matter appear like melted black pitch, and you will be surprised to see that something so purified can deposit so much dirt; you must rejoice when you see this darkness appear, because it will be followed by whiteness and perfect red.

You will see many other intermediate colors appear, such as the peacock's tail after darkness, the iris after white, etc.

As soon as you see the crow's head coming out, you will increase the fire by half a degree; when matter turns white you will have the opportunity to feast your eyes on the most beautiful things that are in the world. The leafy white earth will be strewn with an infinity of dazzling & artistically arranged white glitter. You will also see through the glass a large number of oriental pearls infinitely brighter than the natural ones.

Having thus brought your medicine to the perfect white, you will have an elixir of which a grain radically cures all illnesses. And if we project it on imperfect metals, they are converted into silver better than that of a cup.

At this time, you will increase the fire by one degree successively; this
whiteness will change into a beautiful yellow tending to red; & when the matter is at the degree of perfection, it will be a perfect red,

This is the accomplishment of the magisterium to cure all diseases of the human body & to convert all metals into perfect gold. What we do not explain here is not unknown to Philosophers.

We repeat again that it is necessary to know the earth or the azoth of the
Philosophers well before beginning the operation, and to facilitate the knowledge
of this matter, we will relate a passage from Basil Valentin on this subject. This matter, says this Philosopher, is an average substance between metal and mercury; it liquefies in fire like a metal. It is evident from what we have just said that the material from which the philosopher's stone is made is a metallic substance; this is why, when we do research, we must never leave the mineral kingdom; for he who wishes to reap wheat must sow wheat; & for the same reason, whoever wants
to harvest gold or silver, must sow gold or silver.

Philosophers have never determined the time needed to arrive at these fortunate islands. But we can assure you that it takes at least a year to carry out all the operations from the calcination of the
material to the projection.

When we say that it takes a year to carry out the operation, we suppose
that it will be undertaken by an intelligent Artist; because if one is not sure in all the works of the magisterium, one will not be any further advanced, although one knows the subject perfectly; the accessories are also as essential to know as the matter, since several Philosophers worked for fifteen years with azoth, before being able to succeed, & thousands of good Chemists worked for thirty, forty, fifty & sixty years, & even until the end of their days, with the true and unique material of the philosopher's stone, without being able to derive the slightest advantage from it.

This obviously proves that this science is a gift from God, and that we must ask him for it with a pure and sincere heart, if we want to obtain it.

Success depends on an infinity of things to which the Artist must be
attentive. He must know how to regulate the fire, according to the appearance of the crow's head
and all the other colors which all indicate and absolutely require
a particular regime from which he must never deviate.

As soon as the crow's head begins to appear, you must make an extremely low fire, and do not increase it before having seen perfect blackness.

At this time, we increase it by half a degree, where it must be left until the white has faded; Therefore, it must be increased again with great caution, and continued in this way until the end of the operation.

There is no fear of cooking the dye; because the more it is cooked, the more perfect it will be; but it takes a lot of time to fix the volatile parts and return them to their natural state.

If the fire is suddenly increased, the material which is a true metallic quintessence softens, the spirits become agitated and cause the vase to break, the shards of which can kill the Artist
who can also be poisoned by the the smell of the material, especially if it happened during putrefaction.

All Philosophers agree that the material of their stone or their
raw azoth, leaving the mine is a deadly poison, which has caused
many people to die, this same material is even more
venomous when it has passed through fire, where it develops its poison,
which, instead of losing something of its bad quality, becomes much
more powerful. The Philosophers have sufficiently warned us of this, by comparing the
matter of stone, when it is in putrefaction, to the venom of the viper.

After such advice, the prudent Artist must never enter his
laboratory, without being equipped with a counterpoison, in the event of an accident.

When the Philosophers said that the second part of the operation of the
stone was the work of women and the play of children, they spoke the truth;
but with all this, you always need an intelligent, diligent Artist who has a lot of patience; because we must not ignore the rules of art for governing fire, on which the success of the operation depends for the greatest part.

I think we would do very well to wet the coals before throwing them into the furnace; this cannot fail to produce a very good effect; because if we do not wet the coals, at least in part, they suddenly light up, and cause a sudden increase in heat: which almost always causes the vessels, which can only be made of fragile glass, to break. .

Faber says that he prefers wet to dry digestion, and that it is better
to do the circulation in a water bath than on sand or ashes.

I knew a Philosopher who, after having put the material in the philosophical egg, placed it in a wooden vase which he arranged on a tripod in a very high copper still. The bottom of the wooden vase was
two inches away from the surface of the water. When the still was closed,
a gentle heat circulated around the vase which was at the same degree
of heat as the egg which is under the brooding hen.

A Chemist one day communicated to me as a secret of the greatest importance, that he only used a lamp fire to prevent the rupture of the vases, and to prevent any heterogeneous matter from entering the vase through the pores of the glass.

All Philosophers abhor current fire because of its violence; They
usually and more safely use their cold and humid fire. They say that all their fermentations are done by means of certain cold mixtures, and that this route is much less dangerous than with
the fire of a lamp, the violence of which causes the vessels to break at every moment.

Beccher has described all the degrees of fire quite well, on page 494 & following
of the first volume of his works.

The land of Philosophers must be prepared by an intelligent Artist. We must extract the quintessence without adding anything heterogeneous. Vulgar gold and silver which must be dissolved in philosophical mercury to make stone, being of the same nature as the earth or azoth of the Philosophers, must not be considered as foreign to matter; but before using these two luminaries, they must be purified, calcined & opened to reincrude them, to facilitate their dissolution & develop the propagative germs they contain.

Gold & silver are like the mobiles of all the lower metals; & here is the method that we must follow when it comes to reincrusting them.

Having completed the first operation or the first part of the magisterium, you will take ten parts of milky liquor, and you will add two parts of gold if you want to make medicine for the red. If you want to make it for the white, you will add two parts of silver cup, one and the other must be reduced to filings or very thin sheets, to help nature in its operations, and accelerate the dissolution .

If you want to make a medicine for red, you will melt the pure gold that you want to use for the ferment with raw antimony. You will keep it molten for four hours, and pour it into an ingot mold.

Gold never amalgamates or incorporates with antimony, it only attracts all the alloy it can contain. Then take your ingot when it has cooled, strike it on an anvil with a hammer, the antimony
will fall into powder, and your gold will remain pure in a spongy mass; then put
your gold in a crucible, make it redden without melting it: heat at the same time four times as much weight of common mercury, and throw it on the gold,

While your amalgam is still hot, you will pour good wine spirit over it, to the height of four fingers. You will put everything in a retort with its container, well liquefied, and you will distill the wine spirit and the mercury: you will find your gold reduced to open powder
at the bottom of the vase. This powder is ready to dissolve and incorporate itself
into philosophical mercury, to make universal medicine.

But I would prefer the gold sand of the East Indies, because it is volatile
& contains a natural sulfur which is infinitely more ready to be incorporated
than gold purified by antimony with which it is very difficult to succeed.

After having made your amalgam with gold or silver, you will pass it through the philosophical wheel, according to the rules of the Art; if, at the end of two months, it happened that your ferment was not entirely dissolved, you would add a little menstruation, and you would digest it for another two months, or until your gold powder or sand was completely dissolved, & that the whole is converted into perfect tincture, which you can multiply infinitely in the following way, which I learned from an Italian adept.

Take a part of your red or white tincture, add to it ten parts of the milky liquor which liquefies at a gentle heat, & which coagulates as soon as it smells the slightest cool, the composition of which we gave
in the first part of the present process. Put everything in the philosophical egg, closed hermetically; place the vase, in digestion, in the vaporous bath, as we said above, at the end of three weeks or
thereabouts, all your mixture will be converted into perfect tincture.

You will be careful to make a very slow fire at the beginning of digestion, and around the fifteenth day, you will increase it until the water boils to accelerate perfect fixation.

When you have made this multiplication of tincture, you will be able to
further multiply it in quantity and virtue.

You can repeat this operation several times, each time adding
ten parts of the milky liquor for one part of the tincture.

By repeating the inceration several times in this way, you will bring your tincture
to a degree of perfection that it is not possible to express; because it has the
virtue of converting all imperfect bodies into gold or silver, according to its specification; but this advantage is only smoke in comparison with the other virtues it contains; because it radically heals, as if by a miracle, all illnesses.

The white tincture is also an excellent medicine, but the red one has much more virtue: it is taken in smaller doses than the white one, and more rarely; but if it is to cure a serious illness, we take
two days each, for twelve days, and we find ourselves radically cured.

If we use this admirable tincture for the conversion of imperfect metals into gold or silver, one grain is enough to convert several ounces provided that this same tincture has been subjected to the operation of conjunction and fixation, & provided that the imperfect metals, which we want to
transmute, are in fusion.

This same dye is also used to convert raw stones, as well as ordinary crystals, into precious stones, rubies, and topaz.

It quickly draws the dye from coral, from gold and silver, from pearls, from antimony, which no other liquor can do except in a very imperfect way.

If we dissolve white dye, or red, in rainwater, to water the trees, the plants, the flowers will appear promptly, the fruits will be early, and will have an admirable balsamic taste ; the old trees will resume new growth, and will sprout a large quantity of vigorous shoots.

In a word, it is the universal remedy which generally cures all creatures
of all diseases to which they are subject; it restores
the radical humidity and the natural heat extinguished by the corruption of the mass
of blood that it renews; it revives all the spirits, brings a balm to the
blood, restoring the circulation interrupted by the obstruction of the viscera and glands.

All these wonders take place in the human body, by means of a
natural heat analogous to Nature which immediately takes over all these functions.

Universal medicine acts in the human body, in the same way as the sun acts on dew or rainwater, where it concentrates the aerial atoms which preserve all beings in their natural vigor, fertilizes them, nourishes them as makes universal medicine, which, by God's permission, prolongs the life of man, restores youth; it is a celestial medicine, says Basil Valentin, which strikes and heals; it is the arbiter of life and death, which God created in favor of men who wish to deserve it, by conforming to the morality of the Gospel.

The marvelous effects that this medicine produces are not contrary
to what we read in chap. 14 of the book of Job, where it is said, that God put an end to the life of man. It is certain that he who does not have the happiness of possessing this divine medicine will die according to the ordinary course of Nature; but the one to whom God has granted this precious treasure must be excepted from the general rule; because nothing happens except by the permission of God, who has attached a miraculous virtue to this celestial medicine.

There is no doubt that God knows the kind of death we must die, and that it is not possible to delay it without his permission; but we can use secondary causes and avoid excesses.

God can, if he judges it appropriate, grant a triple lifespan to a man, or cause him to live as long as he keeps his body in a state of life; because he received from the Creator the free will to behave
as he wishes in the world, reserving moreover, for the other life, to reward or punish him according to his works.

Anyone who does not want to moderate his passions, who would want to indulge in all excesses, or who would rashly and unnecessarily expose himself to an inevitable danger, would shorten his days, and render all ordinary remedies vain and useless. He who led such a life would undoubtedly be overwhelmed
with infirmities, and as if broken with old age in the flower of his age: God, to await him to repentance, grants him a prolongation of life; other times, he shortens his days to punish him for his sins from this life, or to put it better, God allows a bad man, an impious one, to shorten his days himself.

In a word, it is evident that God has given us a means of delaying death, and of preserving our healthy mind in a healthy body.

All the Philosophers have described this conservative matter under allegorical, enigmatic names
, and if they have given it to be sniffed out, it is only at the end
of the operation, or in the second order.

Several Chemists have looked for this tincture in a subject where it was very
distant, and even in a fixed body from which it was not possible to extract it,
or they did not have the real means of extracting it, or finally God allowed
them to miss the operation because he saw, by his omnipotence, that they would make a damnable use of it.

Universal medicine contains a heavenly balm which is analogous with
our vital spirit; but it takes a philosophical hand to extract, cook, and bring this balm to the degree of maturity which is absolutely necessary for it to produce its effects.

Stagnant and stagnant waters, and even the most corrupt, are purified by the water of Heaven, from which they come; these two words contain great truth and can provide great light.

It is an improper expression to say that universal tincture effects
the transmutation of metals; it would be much better to say that it matures imperfect bodies and exalts them, because all metals are analogous to each other, and only differ from one another by a single degree more or less distant: we can communicate to them this degree by means of Art; reason & experience are two things necessary to acquire these incomparable treasures.

This universal tincture is drawn from the first universal principles of everything
that exists in the world through the influences of the stars, which, by their arrangement, cause vegetation, life & death.

All sublunary things are exposed to similar vicissitudes; the stars present us with remedies to cure all the ills they cause us.

The universal dye will shine as long as the harmony established between the stars remains; & nothing can ever alter this coloring than a general upheaval.

Nothing is more absurd than the reasoning of those who deny the existence
of a single remedy to cure all diseases which come from corrupted or vitiated blood; return this fluid to its natural state, and the body in which it circulates will be healed. The universal tincture alone can thus restore the human body, or it acts like very pure oil in a lamp; the universal tincture burns while it has a food, and when this food, or better said, when the heterogeneous humors are lacking, the lamp, the oil, or the universal fire goes out in the human body, without touching the healthy parts on which it can fall: it maintains the vital fire, and maintains the spirits around the heart, where it spreads a balsamic virtue, which is then distributed throughout the mass of the blood, which is entirely renewed,
and each member of the body receives new strength to resume the functions that illnesses and age had caused it to interrupt.

Wine, for example, always produces its effect when taken in the right quantity, but when it is taken in too large a quantity, it produces contrary effects, and according to the disposition of the person who drinks it.

When a man is drunk, his genius & his character develop; this is why we see drunkards who are full of joy, while others are sad and drowsy. In others it has cruel effects, barbaric, impious & infamous.

For the same reason, when the universal tincture is taken in quantity suitable, it always produces salutary effects, but it has this triple advantage of working the same wonders in the three kingdoms.

There is a particular secret which is composed with salts, to convert all imperfect metals into gold and silver.

The impious and the libertines must not claim to achieve the
knowledge of this divine science, because God alone is the scrutinizer
of hearts, and he will never allow them to succeed, while on the contrary
he will lead those who fear him as far as possible. 'at the door of this treasure, & will put the key in their hands to open it; but with all this, one must work after having prayed for it; for even the elect will not receive this heavenly gift if they sleep while they should be working.

When you want to work on this admirable tincture, you will take
two ounces of mercury, antimony, and one ounce of gold lime; but remember that we are speaking here of philosophical antimony and not of the vulgar; grind everything in a porphyry mortar, & put it in the philosophical egg, which you will seal hermetically; place your vase on a very gentle sand fire, & cook the material for nine months; but take the precaution of making a graduated fire according to the disposition of the material; because the egg can break after eight months like the day it is put into circulation.

The Chinese have made much progress in this divine science; their Emperor Hiao had the good fortune to discover universal medicine,
by means of which he lived so long that he was believed to be immortal.

The Southern continent is not yet known, because the compass is no longer useful when we reach a certain height, where the Pilots begin to no longer know where they are going. God has undoubtedly reserved this
knowledge for times to come, for our descendants to see.

It is the same with the Philosophical Province or Continent, there is no compass to direct the steps of those who seek it; this is why we must pray to God to be our guide; if we ask him for this grace with a pure heart, with the intention of relieving our neighbor in all adversities, by ourselves renouncing the riches that we could acquire by means of universal medicine, with these provisions, we will obtain without doubt the effect of our request.

Here finally is the declaration of the matter of the universal tincture in clear, intelligible terms & consistent with the truth, as well as in obscure & enigmatic, emblematic terms, & in hieroglyphic characters,

O! all of you ambitious misers, poor Alchemists & Chemisters, who vegetate in a miserable laboratory, where the desire to acquire the universal tincture makes you dry up to the smoke of a thousand poisons, you will only be happy after having found the true mortal poison which gives death
to the ignorant, and makes the true children of Art live long!

O! all of you who have a devouring thirst & a canine hunger for gold & silver, open your ears & listen carefully again to what we are going to say. If you understand us, and if you give us the grace to believe us, you will be able to get yourself a few moments of rest. You won't handle so much garbage & stinking corpses anymore. You will no longer look for this treasure in the herbs, you will no longer dry out your lungs by burning enormous piles of coals; you will recognize, if God is favorable to you, that you need coal, but that you don't need as much as you think. You will no longer roast yourself, as you do: you will recognize that you will be able to cure all ills with a single medicine that is made with a single metallic substance; but it is not easy to compose this medicine; it is a bird that you must catch in flight with the net of Hermes, and it is you yourself who must make this net.

But let us speak clearly and without riddles: medicine is made with a single metallic substance, which contains everything it needs to be self-sufficient, without adding anything foreign to it; but if you want her to be able to provide help to her brothers who are six in number, you must give her food to give her strength, and this food must be analogous to her substance. Here are two things you need to know. You must then know fire & how to govern it according to the disposition of matter. The philosophical vase is also an essential point; because if you do not know the matter & the form, you will never be able to succeed; but that's not all yet. It is also absolutely necessary to know the philosophical year & its four seasons to harvest hermetic grapes at their point of maturity to make an elixir; for if
you pick these grapes while they are in flower or in verjuice, you will never
do anything good with them; instead of generating the bird of Hermes, you will only generate scorpions, if you do not know how to make the hermetic grape harvest in its prefix time.

Natural Physics will teach you to know all these times, all these seasons of the philosophical year. This little treatise contains all the clearest and most intelligible things that can be said on this subject; & if we compare what we have said, with all the works of the Philosophers, we will recognize that we have spoken clearly.

We must imitate Saint Paul by publishing the graces that God has given us, and not imitate the bad servant who buried his treasure in the earth.

Many Alchemists place all their trust in gold alone, because it is the king of metals, the true sun and the perfect phosphorus. It is true that gold contains a heavenly, incomparable balm, which has the virtue of restoring the human body; but we must know how to draw this balm from the depths of the bowels of the gold in which it is contained; the universal solvent is needed to reduce gold to its first material; it must be dissolved without altering it to obtain the perfect tincture.

Other Chemists burn their brains out by working with common mercury
which they amalgamate with things that cannot be named without making one's hair stand on end; after having spent several years in useless and criminal research, they pounced on copper, iron, tin, lead, orpiment, talc, nitre salt, ammonia salt, alum, etc. magnet, arsenic, sublimated mercury & calamine stone. Then having recognized that they were in error, they extracted the juices from the fruits of herbs to make the universal solvent, forgetting what all Philosophers unanimously say, that we must never leave the metallic kingdom since the body of the gold that must be dissolved is from this kingdom, the solvent must also be from it.

The matter suitable for making the universal solvent is really contained in all the subjects that we have just named, but, apart from the fact that it is very difficult to extract it, it is altered and too distant; she is too fixed there; & the balsam which must necessarily be found in the salt which comes from it, after preparation, is too coagulated & contains too many terrestrial & foreign parts, too much combustible sulfur & too much incombustible sulfur for it to be possible to make it extraction; but there exist, as we have already said, two subjects where the material is abundant and from which it can be drawn easily, by two different operations.

There is no doubt that a large number of Chemists worked for
several years on the true azoth of the Philosophers, without deriving any
advantage from it, because they were ignorant of the principles of Nature; they did not know
that this material must be exposed to the air to absorb celestial influences.

There are several particular processes in the composition of which the menstruum or universal solvent of which we have just spoken does not enter; but these particular secrets can only cure a certain number of diseases & perfect metals without completely transmuting them; for it is certain that copper can be exalted to the degree of silver without having universal medicine; this particular really exists & can make the one who possesses it opulent.

But all these particular secrets are nothing compared to
universal medicine which is a salsuginous powder or similar to salt, of a reddish color, a little shiny and as heavy as lead; this powder liquefies in the heat of the sun or a lamp; it supports a
fusion fire, where it remains fixed & incombustible.

Universal medicine only has all these qualities because it comes
from a substance that is incombustible in itself; it must have these
qualities, since the Philosophers say that it can be prepared or calcined
in a glass furnace for several days without fear of altering it;
because nothing is burned or destroyed except the coarse, earthy, superfluous and harmful parts which must necessarily be separated by means of fire.

If we grind the sassuginous material or the azoth of the Philosophers with the dew
of the month of May, and put the amalgam in a glass retort, on a sand fire, we will see, in the course of one day, several
admirable metamorphoses; the mixture will first become a brown color, then yellow, greenish, a beautiful celestial blue & transparent like crystal. All these colors appear successively from morning to evening, and we notice noticeable variations from one quarter of an hour to another, because all the elements are brought together by the vapors of salt, sulfur and mercury; this happens by an admirable combination that only God knows perfectly.

It is a miracle to see that a single substance has three virtues and three different properties.

The spirit & the universal soul are therefore contained in the salt of the earth
fomented by the stars which produce gold, mercury, balsam, the quintessence of the elements; it is therefore in this salt that we must seek
universal medicine: but we must separate the spirit from this salt & rejoin it with its body by means of which it acts & in which it operates at the same time to conduct its operations at a favorable term. We will surely succeed if we have the good fortune to concentrate and impregnate this true nectar of Jupiter with golden sulfur; pure, or of a philosophical sulfur; but we must be diligent to quickly seize the hermetic bird when it still has only one wing: because if we wait until it has all its feathers, it will fly away, and we will never be able to catch him to lock him in the philosophical cage.

Philosophers have never described the place which must contain the ferment in the matrix of the universal tincture; they were as reserved on this subject as when they indicated the true matter under an infinity of supposed names & shrouded in enigma.

It is obvious that all metallic bodies arise from this first universal being, which circulates the seed in all matrices, and after the astral influences have caused this substance to ferment, the metals are formed and take their growth. It is the same with vegetables, plants, wheat, for example; because it will be useless to expose the seed of any plant to the rays of the Sun and the Moon, to the influences of the stars, if it is not deposited in its matrix, which is the earth, where it must be placed to receive astral influences, it will never germinate, because the fixed salt which only exists in the earth, is the true agent which develops the fermentation necessary for all kinds of generation.

Beccher says, that the vivifying spirit of the fixed salt of the earth dwells in the air, that it is he who agitates the flowers, who makes them ferment & produces all the colors that we see in the world, in the three kingdoms; it is this same spirit which cures all illnesses, which entirely renews the mass of the blood by separating from it all harmful humors; it penetrates to the center of the earth to mature & dye all the metals in the mines at the same time.

The substance most essential to our existence is found in this matter; we live as long as we can take this food, and we die as soon as we are deprived of it.

This spirit only appears in the form of an aerial volatile salt, which is a perfect substance which preserves all beings. This salt is contained in all
beings; but it is contained there, and they must be calcined to remove it and make it appear.

Although this celestial spirit is spread throughout the universe, in every place, we must not believe that we can take it everywhere; because the earth alone is its natural matrix, it is in the earth that it imbues itself with all the elementary virtues.

When we have extracted this salt by means of a suitable calcination, we must give it a place to contain it, because it is extremely fugitive & volatile. Without this place, it would not be possible to make it
undergo the necessary operations to develop the virtues it contains.

An intelligent Plowman would soon know the land which contains this salt, if he would take the trouble to examine the productions of Nature; for the earth of which we speak spreads abundance wherever it is used. When we want to acquire knowledge, we must study & experiment; this is the way to discover the hidden treasure of the Philosophers, or to put it more clearly, this is the way to find the mine where we take the azoth which contains a prodigious quantity of central fixed salt, which continually attracts other salts which are incorporated with the sympathetic magnet towards which all astral influences are directed.

It is obvious that we must look for this blessed and fertile land, which contains
the philosophical salt or the material similar to stone, and that it is almost impossible to find it elsewhere than in the vicinity of the gold mines,
in Hungary. , in Transylvania & Nuremberg, in Tokai & elsewhere,
provided there are abundant gold mines or not. This earth is yellowish,
because it is impregnated with the volatile sulfur of gold, or gold which is entirely volatile.

This earth is excellent when it is taken a few feet deep
directly on the mine, because the gold which coagulates, cooks & vegetates
in its mine, continually exhales a vapor which corporifies in
the earth, towards which it flows. directs by the expulsion of the central fire of the mine; it is attracted by a magnetic virtue, moreover, towards the surface of the earth.

The earth, which is perpendicularly above the mines, can be
considered as a large capital, where all the exhalations which rise like from a crucible filled with molten gold are condensed and corporified; but with this difference that the vapors which exhale from a Mine are vapors of living gold, while those which leave from a crucible filled with molten gold must be considered as emanations of a body dead.

The philosophical magnet found in the earth, exposed to the steam of a
gold mine, must be impregnated with a true volatile gold sulfur, by means of which
universal beings are set in motion, & by their great analogy with gold, the philosophical magnet, copiously attract from above, everything that is necessary to lead the magisterium to its highest
point of perfection. If we carry out the operation with this Hungarian earth or
earth of gold, or impregnated with effluvia of gold by means of a suitable spirit,

It is necessary to put a few pounds of this earth in a glass still, with
a menstruum analogous to this golden earth. The mixture is digested for a month on lukewarm ashes, according to art; At the end of this time, all the walls of the vase will be loaded with a very thick crust of gold. It will be hard to believe that the small quantity of earth that will be used to carry out the operation will be able to produce such a large quantity of gold.

From such experience, it is obvious that it would be much more convenient
and more advantageous to look for the material of universal medicine in the earth around the gold mines, or near the rivers which flow with flakes of this precious metal, than anywhere else.

The gold sand that is collected in the rivers of the East Indies certainly contains volatile gold sulfur, or better said, raw gold.

We have tried in vain until now to reduce the sand of the West Indies to a body; it is melted without difficulty, but because of its great volatility, it flies away as quickly as common mercury. It is
astonishing to see that so many skillful Chemists elsewhere do not pay attention to this volatile gold; it is a treasure that Nature presents to us; but greed, ambition, avarice, the love of riches blind many
people. We seek to reduce this gold sand into bodies or ingots, and we do not pay attention to the fact that this volatile gold presents a ready-made material for making the universal dye.

We know that there are experienced Artists who have adopted another
material that is more agile, as they say, and more suitable for making universal dyeing, and that they claim to be more effective in the medical part; but we will leave these gentlemen in their opinion, adding that they can only have small particularities, which will surely never lead them to the universal tincture. Let us never lose sight of this philosophical axiom: He who wants to reap wheat must sow wheat, and for the same reason he who wants to reap gold must sow gold.

When we want to harvest wheat, we must not sow bread; in the same way when we want to harvest gold, we must not sow gold whose germ is burned.

We leave the Chemists stubborn in their opinion; those who do not want
to pay attention to what we come to tell you will see what their system can lead them to. They will recognize, but perhaps too late, that they are wrong. Chemical operations are long & expensive,

I said that the fixed salt of the earth had the same origin as the volatile salt of the air, although they appear to be of a very different quality; but if they are fermented together, they unite and come together amicably.

All plants & minerals owe their existence to this fixed salt, which attracts the spirits they need to take their form & their growth.

The fixed salt of the earth attracts the volatile salt from above to fertilize everything it encounters; & if the earth did not contain this fixed salt, it could not be a matrix suitable for receiving this volatile salt from the air, to preserve it, ferment it and bring it together.

These two things are only one, because, as we said above, they were only one in the beginning; they come from the same principle, and they are of the same nature; this is why they must come together; the volatile becomes fixed, and the fixed becomes volatile, and they render this mutual assistance to each other by means of universal magnetism and by the great sympathy which is between them.

The material of the universal dye has just been named by its own name, as well as the season, the favorable time for carrying out the operation.

Philosophers have covered these two essential points with great care, and to better succeed, they have used allegories, enigmas, and an infinity of foreign names.

This is the material for the universal dye & the way to prepare it.
Until now people have only tried to hide what I have just written openly; these wild names that the Philosophers have used, have led a crowd of misers and voluptuous people into a labyrinth from which they will never emerge. God allowed them to deceive themselves in this way, because
they only sought this treasure to satisfy their wanton desires.

We have just spoken clearly; but those who do not have legitimate views
will never derive the slightest advantage from it.

The essential point of the operation depends on the fermentation of the volatile
aerial salt with the fixed salt of the earth, to join them amicably and
legitimately together.

If all those who have worked on this matter have not succeeded, it has been their fault rather than that of the Philosophers, who wrote. If those who wandered had taken the trouble to think, they would have known how to avoid the precipices into which they fell.

The majority of chemists limit themselves to knowledge of the three
generic names of salt, sulfur and mercury, and they believe they know everything.
when they have these three words engraved in their memory. It is quite certain that these three minerals exercise a continuous and absolute empire in the three kingdoms where they direct and bring together all the astral influences; but we must know when, how, and to what end these wonders take place.

We can make excellent medicines with gold, silver, lead, common mercury, vitriol & several other similar bodies, which truly contain the material of universal medicine, but it is very difficult to purify it; because it is enveloped in coarse and heterogeneous materials which are capable of causing the operation to fail.

We do not claim to say that it is impossible to make a
universal medicine to convert imperfect metals into real gold or silver with the fixed bodies that we have just named; we only want to say that it is very difficult, and we can assure that out of a hundred who work on these matters, there will barely be two who will succeed in extracting universal medicine from it.

Several people have failed because they did not know how to give sufficient time
to the operation; We commonly think that we can begin and complete the great work in six weeks or two months. This happens because the Philosophers said that it was women's work and children's play;
they used these expressions to lead the ignorant and the impious into error.

The second part of the operation may well be regarded as child's play; but it is not the same for the preliminary operations, which include calcination, dissolution, coagulation, sublimation, circulation & digestion. All these operations are done with a graduated fire;
& I can assure that the majority of those who did not succeed, had this misfortune, for lack of having known how to direct their fire in each operation: because if we make a slow fire where we need a fire of fusion, the matter, instead of being opened, will only be touched upon, and can never be rid of the terrestrial parts under which the quintessence is hidden.

This quintessence is not yet able to accomplish the magisterium whose success absolutely depends on volatilization & fixation. All these operations are very long & very boring.

It is certain that an adept, who knows all the operations thoroughly, could shorten the work; but he who has had the good fortune to know the matter and who has not yet done the work, must not deviate from the common path, he must be patient and work; because God only grants this celestial gift as a reward for virtue and work.

It would be very unwise to begin the operation before knowing
perfectly the nature of the volatile salt of the air and that of the fixed salt of the earth. It is no less essential to know the method that must be followed throughout the entire course of the operation.

If we want to acquire a perfect knowledge of these two things, we must not limit ourselves to reading modern Philosophers, we must read what we call the fables of ancient profane authors. This expression will never come from the mouth of a true Philosopher who knows the marvelous things
that the Greeks & Egyptians have described under hieroglyphics, fictions & allegories, to hide them from the knowledge of the impious: the ignorant vulgar, do not understanding nothing in the Metamorphoses of Ovid, in the Theogony of Hesiod, and other similar works, boldly pronounces that they are fables which have no common sense, because he attaches himself to the words, without giving himself worth thinking about.

I agree that Hesiod's expression seems fabulous when he says that Thetis is the daughter of Heaven, and that Hypericon begat the Sun and the Moon.

The Sun heats water which ignites sulfur, and the result is mercury
which is the principle of gold; so when we read the works of Philosophers,
both ancient and modern, we must have patience and not stop at the first sentence; if one encounters obscurity or ridicule in appearance, one should never be put off; one sentence explains another, and this explanation will sometimes only come in a place where you least expect it, but under the enigma.

Hesiod not only said that Thetis was the daughter of Heaven, he added that she was the mother of the Sun, which is the father of all metals.

This word Thetis means sulfur which is converted into mercury, and this mercury is metallized by means of a slow fire which is found in mines in the bowels of the earth.

This is unequivocal proof that the fables of the Ancients are truly
philosophical works, which, under emblems, contain the mysteries of Nature.

Tubaliain, Cham, Chamia, Chemia, all these words mean Chemistry.

The expression so often repeated in all the works of Philosophers:
Nature rejoices with Nature, Nature restrains Nature, Nature triumphs over Nature; this expression, I say, comes from Egypt. This means that Nature is the mother of Chemistry, and that she presides over all its operations.

Moses had learned all the sciences from the Egyptians, which is why the Priests said that he was a second Hermes, seeing him explaining all the hieroglyphs.

Adam received from God himself the principles of all sciences; Adam instructed Noah, he instructed Seth, whose descendants communicated the same knowledge to Abraham; Abraham taught the Chaldeans, the
Chaldeans instructed the Egyptians, and the Egyptians instructed Moses.

Canaam means ancient Hermes & nothing else; Misraim was brother of Ham.

Hermes taught universal medicine to Isis, who cured all diseases; according to the ancients, Isis is the Moon, & Osiris the Sun, or gold & silver.

Tubaliain was the first Vulcan before the flood; Cham is the Jupiter of the ancients; the Egyptian child is the land of Cham; this land of Cham, according to Plutarch, is Chemistry; the old Hebrew man is the same one called Zeus.

Saturn is Noah, who discovered his father; Vulcan was Mitraim, since the flood, & Mercury invented all the arts among the Egyptians: this same Mercury was brother of Mitraim.

Orpheus, Homer, & Democritus traveled to Egypt to learn as did Pytagora, who to be initiated into the mysteries of the Egyptians, submitted to very harsh treatment.

The mercurial water that Pindar of Thebes described is the basis of all metals.

Hippocrates shows in his works that he knew the principles of hermetic science.

The arsenic of the Sybil indicates a sulfur, which, by performing the functions of a male, forces the mercury to stop; but it is not in common arsenic that we must look for this sulfur: because common sense and reason indicate to us that we need an incombustible sulfur or a truly philosophical sulfur.

Several Authors assure that Virgil indicates the material of the stone, in his Aeneid, where he speaks of the opaque tree, which is a species of mystical palingenesis of metals, or an admirable metallic vegetation.

Real chemists make this vegetation using a metallic powder that they know how to compose. They dissolve a grain of this powder in four pounds of rainwater, and add quicksilver, which after six hours vegetates so prodigiously that it fills the entire vase with silver filaments, or mercury converted to silver; we put this vegetation in the dish, and the result is a very pure silver;

Philosophers do these wonders in a very short time, and without much expense. They use things that everyone knows; because they only use silver, quicksilver, reduced to quintessence or first material, that is to say, to metallic water, clear and limpid.

Iron mixed with copper in mining indicates the greatest mystery of Chemistry. If we wanted to take the trouble to examine this mixture, we would soon be able to make vegetations of mercury in silver, and something more advantageous: because he who knows how to make a real vegetation, is not unaware of the way to make malleable glass any more than precious stones.

Silver horns are made with contrary acidic spirits, which develop
the silver tincture; these horns are shiny, malleable, and fuse in the fire of a lamp.

You can make a malleable salt with ammonia salt, which you dissolve
several times in rainwater or dew. It crystallizes to the point of
filling the entire surface of the vase in which the operation is carried out.

Antimony glass, which is the lead of the Philosophers, has a great fixative virtue, and he who will work this glass until it is reduced to the point of perfection of which it is susceptible, will work wonders with all metals. , which are of the class of this mineral.

Nature makes malleable glass every day with the martial vitriol,
plaster & talc of Muscovy, which is a natural glass of the greatest beauty.

There is a reddish, sandy and spongy earth in the vicinity of Arcueil, near Paris, which is an interesting object for chemists; because if we expose this earth in vessels of glazed earth, to
astral influences, that is to say, to rain, to snow, to the rays of the sun and the moon, and we wash it after two months, we get some excellent vitriol; & if we expose it again to the air, it will successively give every month, lead, tin, iron, copper, silver & gold, if we shows the months of July & August.

A somewhat experienced chemist will easily recognize that this earth is not metallic; but that it contains a fixed metallic and magnetic salt, which attracts from the air everything that can be extracted from it after having exposed it to astral influences for a suitable time.

All the earth of Egypt is nitrous, and that is why it was called the earth
of Cham, of Chamia, or earth suitable for being used in Chemistry.

An excellent tincture can be made with saffron from the Levant, using
wine spirits. This tincture is an excellent remedy for healing wounds
& many illnesses.

The saffron faeces are reduced to a solid mass at the bottom of the still after
the extraction of the tincture, which can be volatilized and made much more perfect by means of this residence.

Philalethes assures that all metals are formed of the same material, which
is mercury by means of which Nature performs all its functions.

The clearest proof that all metals come from mercury is that all metals can be reduced to mercury.

We can naturally convert mercury into lead and lead into mercury, by means of Art; lead is converted into iron, iron into copper; if we cook copper, we will put it among the perfect metals.

We can also easily convert antimony into precious mercury, which is very likely to take the form of a perfect metal.

Antimony mercury is more precious than gold in vulgar Chemistry, because it cannot be dissolved without the philosophical rules that Apothecaries or vulgar Chemists do not know.

Antimonial mercury, on the contrary, dissolves easily, and it provides many means for arriving at important discoveries; because, if we mix it with the mercury of other metals, and cook them together, mercury being the link of that of the other metals, obliges them to join with it. This is the basis of Hermetic Philosophy.

Philosophers know an average substance between metals and minerals; this substance is the raw material of metals, and those who have the good fortune to know it do not need to re-incrude them to
have virgin mercury.

This matter extends in the mines through the pores of the earth to form all metallic bodies; but a link is required to hold it, that is to say, it is not possible to convert it into an elixir without adding a ferment of gold or silver.

Quicksilver or common mercury has an infinite number of properties; it can be made to take the form of all metals, without excluding gold and silver.

Sendivogius calls it his steel, because it is the key & the principle of Hermetic Philosophy.

Philaletus says that the stone of the Sages is gold digested to the highest degree, and circulated in igneous essence, which is of the greatest penetration. The same Author adds that it is a dead body which dyes silver to infinity. Can this dead body be anything other than gold put to death and putrefied, and then spiritualized, but the gold must first be dissolved in a mercury which is of the nature of gold, otherwise it would never germinate? , because this mercury is like soil in which gold must necessarily be sown to make it bear fruit.

Philosophers only admit three elements which are air, water and earth; because they only recognize the common fire, as it exists in our homes.

the bed or home where this conjunction takes place: the air is the means or distributor of celestial virtues. Water is the seed of all created beings.

This is the order that God has established in the course of sublunary things.

Quicksilver & all other minerals are composed of dry & fluid water: mercury can only produce metal or minerals which are then converted into tin, lead, silver, iron & gold. This is done by means of the conjunction of sulfurous and mercurial fat; it cooks itself by its natural heat, because it contains a radical agent which has the virtue of leading metals to their degree of perfection, without the help of
any other external agent.

Mercury has no other purpose than to produce gold or silver; but for this, it must be delivered & purged of all the filth, of all the impure sulfur with which it may be contaminated by accident.

All imperfect metals are raw, impure gold, which is not yet ripe; therefore separate the impurities by means of our arcane, our fire, to exalt the gold and make it digest; our fire exalts what is of its nature, and consumes everything that is impure.

Every metallic seed is a true golden seed; there is no seed of tin, lead, copper, iron, or silver: because the form of all these imperfect bodies is purely accidental; thus, all metallic matter is a real gold miner; All it lacks is proper digestion to separate the faeces and all the raw materials. This digestion must be fixative & destructive of all heterogeneous materials, & the form must be introduced at the same time.

Lead is not multiplicative in lead; but it is multiplicative in gold which contains a multiplicative seed for white & for red.

The white tincture is contained in the residue of gold only: it is the first perfection of the red tincture which is the accomplishment of the magisterium. The white dye is philosophical, because gold is its father, and it becomes red in its time, when it has acquired the perfection of which it is susceptible by the nourishment which our philosophical fire gives it.

It is absolutely necessary to have the seed of gold to create universal medicine.
Gold must be opened to the core to produce its seed. Corrosive and regal waters do not have the power to dissolve gold: they only reduce it to fine filings which can be reduced to a body with suitable salts; which it is no longer possible to do when the gold is dissolved by means of our mercurial water; therefore it is united and so well incorporated with the solvent, that they are nothing more than a single body which it is impossible to divide, and it is in this same body that the multiplicative seed of the 'gold.

To extract this seed, it is necessary to destroy the gold, or at least reduce it to the point where it appears destroyed: this is when all its substance is converted into sperm.

Gold is entirely reduced to sperm, when it is reduced to water: sperm lives in water. This is why the seed of gold is called water in all the Books of Philosophers; & to have this seed, the gold must disappear entirely. This point is essential, it is the great secret of Art; there is only a very narrow path to arrive at this goal, and there is no other guide than the secret fire of the Philosophers, which they have hidden or masked under an infinity of names, of riddles & allegories: Basil Valentin calls it,
balm, urine, dew of the month of May, poisonous dragon, sieve, marble, theriac, talc, niter salt, & Roman vitriol.

These are the names that the Philosophers have given to their menstruation, which is a royal diadem, without which it is not possible to draw sperm from the solar body or from gold. This sperm must appear in a mercurial form to exalt it into quintessence, which is first white, and which then
becomes red by cooking with a continuous fire. All this is done by means of a homogeneous & mercurial agent, penetrating & pure, crystalline without being diaphanous, liquid without being humid. Such is the mercury of the Philosophers as to the exterior; but internally, it is a being full of life which is the soul of gold or the pure quintessence of this metal.

The Sophists who think that with common mercury alone, without the addition
of any foreign matter, this quintessence can be extracted, are in a very gross error. When they reduced the quicksilver to melting gum, by gentle heat, they believed they had found the phoenix; they expose it to the sun to attract astral influences; this mercurial gum, if well prepared, can dissolve in the sun; for then, the poor Sophist rejoices, he considers himself the possessor of the stone of the Sages; he had plans made to build castles; he promises fortunes, treasures to his friends; he is committed to providing them with a long life. Then he stocks up on calcined gold which he dissolves in aqua regia, to facilitate Nature in what he says; he precipitates the solution with oil of tartar, and causes it to evaporate.

The gold is reduced to an impalpable powder, which soon disappears after it has been put into the solution of mercurial gum. I agree that gold is incorporated in some way, and that the result is an amalgam which copper gilders could use, but which is in no way suitable for philosophical work.

The poor Sophist believes that his gold is radically dissolved; he prides himself on having extracted its quintessence, and nothing is capable of persuading him otherwise; he wants to continue his operations as vain as they are ridiculous; believing he possesses everything necessary for the magisterium, he encloses this material, thus prepared, in the philosophical egg, to bring it to perfection.

I knew a person who followed this walk from point to point, as I have just described it. This same person was so stubborn and so biased in favor of his process that she cooked this composition for ten years, without interruption. I saw the furnace of this poor Sophist, who died in pain.

This oven was so large that I counted up to twelve philosophical eggs in it; the mere sight of so many vases clearly proves that the Chemist who directed them did not have the slightest idea of ​​the multiplicative virtue of stone.

True Chemists know well what is lacking in common mercury to make it philosophical mercury. The Sophists do nothing other than wash it, sublimate it, spiritualize it & cook it; they think that after
having made it lose its natural form, it must take that of the Mercury of the
Philosophers.

We have already said that all metals come from the same source & all have the same material principles, which is mercury. This is why it appears that common mercury is the metallic material most analogous to
all metals, and that it alone, with pure gold, should suffice for the composition of the stone: it seems that it it lacks nothing other than a degree of purity and cooking with a ferment.

But Philosophers do not think like this; they are not unaware that common mercury
contains part of the material of stone; and that if we want to use it in the composition of medicine, we must give it what it lacks to be a perfect quicksilver.

Air deprivation is, in part, the cause which causes mercury to remain in the raw state in which we see it. He waits for what he lacks to achieve to the perfect degree of metal; & when this does not happen, it must necessarily have been stopped by some accident, some local vice, or this material has been so sick, so mistreated, that it has lost all its strength and all its auric propagative virtue .

If gold had been dissolved in philosophical mercury, and the whole thing had been prepared by an adept, and nothing was missing to make the stone, if this material was even in the egg, if afterwards having cooked it for a month, we let it cool, the same thing would happen, the aurific propagative virtue would be extinguished as it is in common mercury which has suffered accidents in mining.

To make a mercury suitable for the magisterium, it is necessary to begin by purifying this metallic body of all superfluities, and giving it everything it lacks, it is necessary to animate it with a real burning sulfur to consume all the impurities it encounters. This sulfur must have at the same time a
generative & propagative quality. In a word, for common mercury to become a true philosophical mercury, there is nothing else to do than to separate what is contrary to it, and add to it a pure sulfur which cures it of its leprosy and of his dropsy.

It is then necessary to add a suitable portion of material taken from the reign
of Jupiter & Saturn, and the philosophical mercury will be prepared in all
its perfection; but be careful not to add anything of a
nature contrary to its own; remember that you must never leave the
metallic path: because the stone of the Sages is only composed of mercury, gold
& silver, if these three metals are not intimately joined, dissolved,
sublimated, mortified & exalted all three together, they will never produce
the slightest effect.

To create universal medicine, there is nothing else to do than bring together the elements that surround us on all sides; all beings contain them, and they are their support.

The Philosophers' Stone is the first of all elements, it is found in all created beings; & from the moment it ceases to exist there, they perish.

To ensure and convince yourself that we are working on real material, we must subject it to the test of fire; because it is non-combustible. The Philosophers
say that it can be calcined or prepared in a reverberator furnace,
or in a glassmaker's furnace, without fearing that she might receive any damage; because fire can only have an impression on foreign parts from which we must deliver her. This clearly proves that stone matter can only exist in metals, and even in the most perfect.

We must therefore search in metals and never leave their class.

We must seek in gold, when we would beget gold; common sense and reason tell us that we must look for the germ of gold in gold itself, and not elsewhere.

This is the reasoning of all Philosophers; It is quite obvious that the stone must be sought in the most perfect metals, from which the sperm or multiplicative seed must be extracted. To succeed in this operation, it is necessary to destroy the metallic form or the accidental form; but we must preserve
the metallic species which resides in the mind.

It is therefore necessary to change the external form of gold, and reduce it to water; because the spirit of gold is preserved in water, and this water thickens, for the second time, after putrefaction; it takes a new form of gold, such as it had before.

This new form that gold takes again, after its reincrudation, is much
more perfect; because it has acquired a multiplicative virtue to infinity.

The gold that must be used must be ripe; it must be purified several times, as Flamel says, by melting it with antimony. The gold thus purified dissolves easily in raw & cold mercury. From these two things a mercury will result which we call brandy. This double material or this double mercury is cooked, and the result is a metal much more precious than gold, since it converts all metals into gold.

This is the true composition of universal medicine. Convert
vulgar mercury into philosophical mercury; convert vulgar gold into philosophical gold, that is to say, reincrust these two metals, mix the solutions without adding anything, cook them for a suitable time,
and you will have the incombustible elixir.

If you have the secret of the external fire that you must use, you will be able to observe a revolution in the matter every day until the humidity is completely dried up by the calcination.

The philosophical smoke is hidden in the philosophical egg which must be heated with moderate heat; for if it were too strong, the whole work would perish; if it were too weak, the work would likewise perish.

The great secret of the Philosophers consists in the knowledge of the degrees
of fire; for there is only one degree suitable for the magisterium. The philosophers
have dwelt at great length on this subject; but it is impossible to grant them. A large number of good Artists, who had the real material in hand, have failed because they ignored the degrees of external fire.

Philosophical Mercury is what is called the fountain or bath, where the King bathes; nothing should be added except gold reduced to filings.

Nicolas Flamel says that philosophical mercury exudes an unbearable stench, and that it makes itself quite known by its smell.

When you have this material, cook it as we have just said; make a secret conjunction in which the hands have no part; & of two things you will only be left with one, but infinitely more perfect than those you will have used.

The sulfurous part must not be separated from the mercurial substance, nor the mercurial part from the sulfurous part: they must be united inseparably to produce their effect. This mercurial sulfur and this
sulphurous mercury are the basis and foundation of philosophical work.

Observe carefully the nature of this sulfur and this mercury, and be careful
not to make a mistake; these two things are but one; mercurial sulfur is ripe & digested; sulphurous mercury is raw, they must be combined by means of calcination.

Any calcination that does not take place internally is unsuccessful.

The second calcination of the gold must be done in dissolving mercury; but you must carefully observe the weights and doses. As soon as they are joined, the heat acts in the humidity and reduces the gold into a subtle powder, and a short time later into a kind of black gum.

It is necessary to combine the raw mercury with the ripe gold, to reincrude it, calcine it and dissolve it according to Art. The sulfur which is in mercury; is a divine water which digests matter, it is an azoth which enriches those who have the happiness of possessing it.

The body of the azoth is a land that some Philosophers have called the land of Lemnos, or sigillata.

Lemnos is an island from which three different mineral lands are obtained; the first is used in fulling mills; the second is used by carpenters, and the third contains excellent medicine to cure a large number of diseases. Lemnos belongs to the Grand Turk, there is only a very small place on this island where medical terra sigillata could be taken. The Sovereign has the mine exploited on his behalf, and has all the terra sigillata extracted from it transported to Constantinople: he keeps it for his use and that of his subjects. Gallienus wrote an extensive Dissertation on this land. The philosophers who seem to want to indicate this for the true subject of the stone, add that it must be exposed to the air from the month of March until the month of September, so that the rainwater it must receiving it
for six months, imbues it with all astral influences.

In September, mercury produced by rainwater is extracted from this earth; but we must take this mercury precisely at the time when it is ripe, if we fail at this point the work will fall into ruin.

The vulgar despise this earth, because it is dirty and stinking, especially after having been exposed to the air for six months; it becomes like mud, like silt drawn from the bottom of a ditch filled with stagnant water; but the children of Art find it dazzling in this state. They know well that it is a very pure virgin, covered in rubbish, from which they know how to strip it by means of strong calcination, in a glass furnace.

This material is only dirty on the outside, nothing is dirty except its
coat, which is very easy to strip by fire.

God thus covered it with filth to shield it from the knowledge of the impious who search for it everywhere, and who trample it under their feet without knowing it.

Burn the slag that covers it, and it will appear dazzling to you.

This virgin land is sister & wife of our King, give her the honors she deserves; if you lend her a hand to get rid of her dirty clothes, she will reward you; purify it to the highest degree, provide it with a celestial body; when you have rid it of all its impurities, it will be dazzling: it is not that way by its nature, but we thus make it dazzling by separating all the gross superfluities. As soon as it is pure, you will take care to combine it with pure gold; it will feed itself and take its growth from the own substance of gold, and when they are well united together, you will see a new body much more dazzling than the Sun that you have conjoined.

So seek the means to obtain this Queen, this divine material, this incomparable treasure, and add to it only pure gold, well calcined and reduced to very fine filings, you will be the happiest of all mortals.

Pontanus says, that he who has the happiness of reaching the autumn of his work, must abandon everything else to the sole care of Nature; dissolution & putrefaction depend entirely on the regime of fire: all these operations are carried out under the seal of Hermes.

However, we still have a double fire which we can easily know
when we have preliminary knowledge.

When Philosophers speak of their vase, we should not mean a retort, a matras, nor an alembic. The vase of the Philosophers and the philosophical mercury are one and the same thing, because the philosophical mercury is the matrix in which the sperm of gold must be contained in order to germinate and bear fruit: thus the fire of the Philosophers, the smoke of the Sages , the virgin's milk, the menstruum or universal solvent, are all the same thing to which we have given all these names and an infinity of others.

Remember, then, that after the preparatory calcination and the extraction
of the menstruation, all that is needed is a fire, a vessel, and a smoke, that is to say, philosophical mercury in which we make dissolve pure gold, prepared in a suitable manner, to help Nature in her functions.

Do not forget that the digestive fire whitens the vase and penetrates it; its smoke or the bond surrounds everything & penetrates everything.

The real fire is in the mercury; there is another fire which is double, and a double water: fire and water are different by the different operations that they produce; but it is only one and the same thing, which is philosophical mercury.

The philosophical fire is alive, the water is alive, the vase is alive as well as the smoke.

There are only two subjects in the world which contain the true philosophical mercury, which is similar to the essence of gold; but it is different from its substance. When you know how to convert the elements, you will know where to take this mercury. Make a friendly conjunction of fire with earth, and you will have the key to the magisterium.

You will easily acquire the practice to bring the dyeing to the highest degree of perfection; but you have to dye this mercury, if you want to use it to dye metals, stones, and to convert into radical moisture, into perfect substance, all the bile and the morbific humors which are found in all bodies.

Philosophical mercury is this admirable humidity that the Philosophers
call virginal milk, water of the Sun & Moon, water which does not wet the hands, because it is dry water, such as is necessary to dissolve gold & silver, & give them a new life. This celestial water converts gold into pure spirit, which multiplies in a miraculous way, which is enough to demonstrate the infinite goodness of God towards us.

Try to know the philosophical river which issues from a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds; a southern rain will show you this mountain, if you want to be a little attentive: because, although it is continually covered with snow, it nevertheless contains a devouring fire
which exhales a vapor which is absolutely necessary for the hermetic operation. Stir this fire to increase the steam. Dig the earth at the foot of the mountain, and you will bring out the real mercury with its caduceus which works wonders.

Here is philosophical mercury, as well as the vase and the fire; but make no mistake, do not take vulgar mercury for philosophical mercury. I advised you to dig the earth at the foot of the mountain;
but I must not let you ignore that you will have great difficulty in doing this work, because you will encounter very hard stones.

Then take some Saturn herb which is found in all Saturnian locations. The branches of this plant will appear dead to you; but
don't let that put you off; its root is full of juice; tear it off & throw it
into the hole you made at the foot of the mountain. Then bring in Vulcan, and instantly all the pores of the mountain will be filled with Saturnian vapor, which will be impregnated with the igneous, philosophical spirit, or spirit of Saturn, whose property is to whiten. This is the philosophical mercury & the way to prepare it.

Here is the vegetable & mineral saturnia to make the King's bath.

This is the secret of philosophical mercury; but, as it is easy to see, without the enigma. Philosophers have never spoken more clearly about this part of the magisterium. We recognize that philosophical mercury is the vessel in which the king or gold is contained & enclosed by the spiritual fire, which is a pure Saturnian vapor, which embraces the gold, penetrates it softens & whitens it in the ejaculation of his sperm.

Saturn continually works wonders until he has given gold all the force it needs to exercise its empire, and show how far its power can extend, which is to fix , coagulate & dye. This is why the Stone of the Sages is an active & passive world, because it contains the assembly of everything that can be found on earth; she is the movement active & passive of all beings. It is fixed & volatile, raw & ripe, because its rawness is corrected by its maturity, and both are homogeneous with it.

Sulfur & salt are the same thing in philosophical mercury in whose body they are identified; they are of the same kind, and only differ in one cooking.

Philosophers do not advise mixing volatile mercury with fixed sulfur, although they say that there is a different salt in one and the other; but a mercury analogous to all metals is necessary. These two things being mixed together, according to the weight of Nature, by cooking gently, we soon have universal medicine.

Nature makes gold with mercury alone, in the bowels of the earth without any mixture; but we shorten the work by means of art, that is why we are obliged to add a fixed sulfur. Mercury attracts this sulfur by the force of fire, this sulfur changes the mercury & converts it into elixir.

If you think carefully about the effects of this process, you will discover the real cause: notice that gold is a cold & humid body. Mercury holds a happy medium between these two bodies, and it is he who develops the dyes.

Gold is a cooked & digested body; the silver is not ripe; mercury is the link that unites these two opposites. So join the silver with the mercury by means of a proportionate fire, incorporate these two metals well, make it a mercury which retains the fire in its body; but take care to purify this mercury well, separate the feces well.

When you have thus purified him, make him eat gold; the hot and the cold will love the humid, they will sleep together in bed or in the fire of their friendship. The gold will dissolve on the silver, and the silver will coagulate on the gold, and will become only one body. Continue the operation, cook until the spirit is corporified, & you will have universal medicine in all its perfection.

There are metallic species that must be cooked alternately, in imitation
of mineral and plant spirits, which are simply cooked in their water.

The nature of mercury changes during cooking; but the color & shape do not change. Mercury is altered in the dissolution of metals, and the
metals then act in the mercury which they coagulate.

It appears, by this reasoning, that mercury and other metals have a great affinity, and that they agree well when put together.

Water has the virtue of improving the body, & the water corrected by the bodies, takes on their nature.
This clearly demonstrates the error of those who divide the homogeneity of mercury by drying it with spirits, or by corrupting its earth with corrosives.

Mercury is the sperm of metals; nature formed it to be a perfect metal; it only lacks pure digestion by means of a pure & metallic sulfur, which it contains internally to make perfect gold; but art does not know this secret, although it may very well exist, and nothing seems repugnant to that; but to mature gold in this way with mercury without adding anything to it, it would take many centuries to cook it; the expense would be immense.

The most perfect sulfur in the world exists in mercury where
it is amalgamated by nature; it is this sulfur which determines all its qualities, which causes it to die and resuscitate into spiritual, penetrating gold, and of which a very small quantity dyes, in an instant, a hundred thousand times more imperfect metal into pure gold; the feces are separated in an instant, and digestion is completed as soon as it begins.

Mercury, by its nature, is no different from gold, but it must be cooked and matured. He cannot do this by himself; it is necessary to add a spirit, in a very small quantity: Nature immediately operates a secret and marvelous conjunction, by means of art; but it is not the work of our hands, since it is an incomprehensible thing.

The ignorant do not know how to do anything other than mix gold with mercury;
& they call this amalgam, the animated gold of the Philosophers, from which they will never derive the slightest advantage; because there is no conjunction.

The philosophical conjunction is alternative, & there is not the slightest confusion between the joined things, because the spirit of gold mixes with the spirit of mercury, as easily as water mixes with water ; but remember that gold will never combine perfectly with mercury, without
the addition of an imperfect body, by means of fire. This imperfect body
is a shiny metal, which contains a living germ, which penetrates the gold, alters it and forces it to retain its soul.

We do not seek to mislead true lovers of hermetic science. We do not want to hire them to work on common mercury; as long as it has the metallic form, it will have neither spirit nor fire. If you can give common quicksilver the spirit and fire it lacks, you will have true philosophical mercury. This is not impossible, but it is very difficult.

Many good Artists have erred in the conjunction they wanted to make before the proper time, because they were unaware that philosophical marriage is never celebrated before dissolution,

The property of money is to launder; the fire mortifies & dries up all moisture. We must abandon most of our mercury operations; he always does his duties when he is not troubled.

The Sophists cook gold with common mercury, and they find nothing because all the substance of the stone is not found in these two metals. Philosophical mercury itself is not entirely the material of the stone: thus common mercury with gold containing together only part of the substance of the stone, it is impossible to make a perfect conjunction, & therefore, they will never generate stone, even after cooking for several centuries.

Gold is the male in the philosophical generation; his seed is hidden in his most abject dross; but this only happens after he has ejaculated his sperm into a suitable womb; this same sperm of gold must mix with feminine or silver sperm, and must be fomented with suitable heat; it is then necessary to feed the child that comes from it, and make it eat its own substance.

In this case, we can do wonders with gold, which, after passing through this wheel, will return a hundredfold and much more.

We have already demonstrated that gold is the most perfect of all metals,
and we add that it is only because of this great perfection that it is the
father of our stone; but it does not provide everything necessary for the magisterium; it only provides the sperm which must be thrown, as we have said, into a suitable womb; this sperm is the masculine part
of our stone, which is nothing other than the propagative seed of digested gold.

This is the living gold of the Philosophers; it is easy to see that common gold must be reincruded before pouring it into its natural matrix.

Everything that enters the magisterium must be animated; everything that is dead must be vivified before it can be fit for any production.

So revive the gold, draw the sperm from it in a sweet way; make it active & suitable for our magisterium. He will give you the first material of our stone, I mean the male. From then on, we can no longer say that it is gold; for it rather resembles copper, lead, and smoke; which cannot be made gold again; in a word, it is a spiritualized body.

Spiritualize therefore what is corporeal, says Hermes, draw its shadow to its root; the shadow of which this prince of Philosophy speaks is nothing other than the sperm of gold, who is hidden in the shadow of his body; the black color which appears in putrefaction is also contained under the shadow.

Aristotle says that we must begin by sublimating the mercury to purify it well before giving it a body to dissolve; but what is this mercury that must be sublimated? There are an infinity of false sublimations, which we must try to avoid in order to attach ourselves to the true one, which must be purely philosophical; it consists of making matter subtle by stripping it of all the terrestrial parts with which it is enveloped.

This happens in the same manner as the earth is darkened by the eclipse of the moon, which by the interposition of the earth is deprived of the light of the sun.

This sublimation takes place in the dark sphere of Saturn, which is covered
by a thick cloud for a certain time. Jupiter then takes Saturn's place; it fills the sky with a brilliant cloud, and it distills a sweet dew on the earth, which softens in an admirable way. Then, impetuous winds rise in its bowels. These winds lift the stone upwards, to put it within reach of receiving the astral influences, which send it back downwards, to the earth, to nourish itself and clothe itself with a natural body.

This is the explanation of the enigma of the Philosophers, who all say, make the stone receive the virtue of superior and inferior things. Thus, neither gold nor mercury can provide the first material of the stone, before the tincture has been extracted from the gold, by means of the dissolving mercury.

This tincture comes to life as soon as it appears, because it is dead while it is still contained in the body of gold. This is the material of the ancient Philosophers which only appears after the Artist has opened the door to leave the prison.

Everyone knows this material, from which we can easily extract the mercury which is very hidden there; it is philosophical mercury that kills gold; it is the philosophical land where gold can germinate. Give this earth a husband she loves and ardently desires; put them together in the nuptial bed, or you will leave them until mercury, by its nature, has produced a philosophical and royal child, whose father is gold and mother silver, and nothing is truer than this expression.

We have reported everything that the Philosophers have said that is most intelligible
on the subject of their stone, on their mercury, and on the sulfurs of gold and silver.

There remains nothing to explain except the furnace, the vase and the third
degree fire.

The stove must be made of terracotta, the vase must be glass, and elemental fire is required.

We must only dwell here on those things which are absolutely
necessary for the work, because common things are known to us in a different way than to the Sophists, who have and cannot have any knowledge of our matters; for our fire, our vessel, our furnace, are all secrets which are known only to true Philosophers; This is at least the feeling of Sendivogius, Raymond Lulle, and Flamel, who assure that the fire, the vase, and the furnace are one and the same thing.

Fire excites bodies and puts them into fermentation more than material fire;
this is why it is said that burning wine is a very strong fire.

When the Philosophers say that one must burn their copper with a very strong fire, the Sophists believe that one must make a coal fire.

Philosophical mercury contains three fires, which are, natural fire, innate fire, and artificial fire.

Philalethes gave the composition of philosophical mercury as well as Flamel; although these two Adepts were not contemporaries, one would nevertheless be tempted to believe that they gave each other the word to write the same thing, or that they copied each other. In any case, here is their procedure, and I believe that if we knew how to understand them, we would not fail to succeed.

Take philosophical lead, amalgamate it with quicksilver, grind the composition in an iron mortar, with distilled rain water; The result is a very white amalgam, which you will put in a glass retort with its container, well lubricated, and you will distill the mercury that Philalethes calls her eagle. It is necessary to coob the mercury up to nine times on the residence of the lead, in the retort: ​​after these operations, the mercury, thus prepared, must dissolve the gold radically, and reduce it to a philosophical tincture, according to Philalethes; but I think that this mercury will never produce such an effect, if we do not add to it the dove of Diana. What is this dove of Diana? The Authors have talked about it a lot; but we know little more about it. Suichten thinks that Diana's dove is nothing other than a solution of silver in a dish, which must be introduced into mercury; but Bécher is not of the same opinion, he assures that there exists a mineral whose salt is stronger and purer than that of marcasite. If we use this mineral in place of silver lead, mercury is quickly sharpened and
is able to dissolve gold radically. Flamel uses a martial lead, which gives mercury the force to heat the volatile gold sulfur, which is impregnated with philosophical sulfur, to produce the hermaphrodite of the Philosophers, who is male and female at the same time, & which is an invigorating sulfur; but a magnet is needed to attract this sulfur, after having softened the body where it is contained.

COMPOSITION OF PHILOSOPHICAL MERCURY ACCORDING TO PARACELSE.

Take two ounces of silver, very pure, without alloy; reduce it to filings,
which you will redden in a crucible, & you will add an ounce of martial regula: melt everything together; add to it two ounces of precipitated mercury; cover the crucible, leave it on the fire for a quarter of an hour, at the end of which you will remove it and let it cool.

Then pound the composition in a marble mortar, wash it with distilled rain water, until you have separated all the slag, and the amalgam is as shiny as silver from a cup. .

Put this amalgam in a glass retort, with its container, well lubricated; place it on a sand fire, and all the substance of the mercury will pass into flowing mercury: here is the eagle of the Philosophers, but it is necessary to repeat the distillation of this mercury up to ten times, adding silver from the cup & martial regula.

COMPOSITION OF THE MARTIAL RULES.

Take nine ounces of antimony, melt them in a crucible, separate the slag.

Then take four ounces of soft iron, you can take horse nail clippings; make them redden in a crucible, and thus throw them into the molten antimony; there will immediately be a great boiling; for antimony devours all metals except gold. Cover the crucible with a tight-fitting lid and leave it like this for a quarter of an hour. Then add two ounces of salt of nitre & as much salt of tartar refined & incorporated together; stir well with an iron spatula; you will see a dazzling star appear in the crucible; separate the slag as much as possible, & pour the regula into an iron crucible which you will strike with a stick to precipitate the regula & float all the slag which you can easily detach from the regula, which will remain beautiful, clear, pure , & a yellow as dazzling as gold.

This is the true composition of the martial antimony regula with which we can work wonders in Chemistry & Medicine; but we believe that it is our duty to warn our Readers and those who will carry out this process, not to let themselves be seduced by this beautiful color of gold; because if we do not know the first metallic agent, we will only succeed with great difficulty, and by chance, in making the conjunction of gold with the regula.

If we wanted to be a little attentive in composing this regula with iron and common antimony, such as is sold by druggists, we could acquire great insights which would perhaps lead to the knowledge of true antimony. or azoth of the Philosophers: because if we want to examine the marvels that this regula presents at the bottom of the crucible, we will see first of all a perfect separation, and then a reunion of the three Principles, provided that we are exact in observing the doses, & that we know how to choose a suitable time to carry out this operation, the success of which absolutely depends on the position of a Planet.

Here is what we were able to discover regarding the doves of Diana, after consulting the works of the best Philosophers.

Take pure salt of tartar, water it with oil or spirit of tartar, until it is well saturated: put it in a glass matra with its capital & well-lit container, & distill it until dry.

You will extract the little fixed salt which will remain in the matras after the distillation; you will calcine it in a crucible with a fusion fire, you will put it back in the matras & add on it the liquor that you removed from it while distilling. You will distill again as the first
time, and repeat this operation until the fixed salt has absorbed all the spirit of tartar, which usually happens at the seventh distillation.

Then pour rectified wine spirit onto this salt of tartar thus impregnated with its spirit, and distill it until the fixed salt has absorbed all the wine spirit; you will have a salt impregnated with two sympathetic spirits, which are conjoined with a suitable body.

Here are the doves of Diana which have the virtue of bringing out the arsenical sulfur which is contained in the martial regula of philosophical antimony.

When one is fortunate enough to succeed in making Diana's doves, it is very easy to convert all the substance of the regula into flowing quicksilver, externally similar to common mercury, but which contains other admirable properties.

The mercury which is thus drawn from the regula by means of Diana's doves, is impregnated with raw gold sulfur, also participating in a martial virtue; we can sublimate it with vitriol & nitre, & about a gross of gold in lime for each pound of mercury, which has the virtue of dissolving gold radically, because it contains an appetizing martial virtue, which the good Flamel calls saber chalybé de Mars.

Having thus mixed vitriol, pure nitre, & calcined gold, with the martial-antimonial regula, reduced to flowing mercury, digest everything together in a closed matras with a blind capital, in horse manure for fifteen days, at the end of which you will find your amalgam converted into dazzling cinnabar, which you will revive by throwing it into boiling rainwater. All the salts will dissolve in the water, and your mercury will reappear with a new brilliance, which you can increase prodigiously by repeating this digestion with manure up to seven times; but we must not forget to add new niter salt
and as much purified Roman vitriol each time.

This operation is a bit long & boring; it takes four months to bring it to perfection; but if we could see in advance the dazzling brilliance of this mercury thus prepared, and the great knowledge it can provide, we would not regret the time required for this work, which moreover is done on three quarters and a half in horse manure, without us having to touch it, because the manure can maintain an equal heat for fifteen days.

This whole process is in accordance with the doctrine of Philalethes who seems to be limited to mercurifying the regula.

Jean de Solis claims that by mixing martial antimony mercury with
common mercury, a living dragon is generated which is the true
mercury of the Philosophers, which dissolves gold radically; but I would not like
to guarantee that this process could produce such an effect.

The Philosophers' method of preparing sulfur is one of the greatest secrets of Art; we can discover this by analyzing the metals, by reincruding or reducing them into the first material, which must be combined
with another material of the same metallic species & cooked the composition to obtain the universal dye.

Philosophers assure that gold and silver are the basis of stone, at least that is the general feeling, but there are people who want and assure that it is only necessary to add gold. mercury gold; others draw a different conclusion, and limit themselves to gold sulfur with mercury.

But the most reasonable of all opinions is to put natural salt with sulfur and mercury, which are the basis of the stone. The sulfur must be taken from the body of the calcined gold, and the mercury must be taken from a cup silver reduced to raw material; this is the feeling of Raymond Lulle.

Mercury extracted from an imperfect metallic body can be suitable for the magisterium, because it can very easily be impregnated with the tincture of gold and silver,

The Philosophers know a triple mercury which, however, can only have this quality after three different operations, which are the calcination & the sublimation of the matter which they want to reduce into philosophical mercury, the impregnation of the tincture of reincrusted
gold , & rubification.

When we carry out the first sublimation of mercury, we must carry out the labors of Hercules, whose Soldiers are so frightened by seeing so many different metamorphoses, that they all die: mercury remains alone, but Diana & Venus protect it.

Géber says that the mercury of the Philosophers is not common mercury, neither in its nature nor in its substance; but he assures that they both came from the same source or mine.

Philosophical mercury contains: its sulfur, which, by means of art, multiplies infinitely. Half of its substance is natural, and the other part is artificial; what it contains internally is natural, and is found after ingenious work; we can only make it appear by means of a philosophical sublimation; because what appears externally is accidental. We must separate all impurities, both interior and exterior, to reveal what is hidden.

Philosophical mercury, or the material from which it is obtained, has been so contaminated in its origin, that it requires triple work to purify it of all the impurities it has contracted in mining.

Quicksilver has inveterate dropsy, from which it is very difficult to free it; However, we overcome it with a sovereign remedy that exists in the mineral kingdom. His greatest illness comes from fatty,
limpid and very impure water that he contains in his body, and which infects all its parts. This illness is not natural to him; it is obvious that it is accidental, and that is why it is curable. We can separate all the impurities from it, by putting it in the humid bath of Nature, & in a dry bath to evaporate all its phlegm. After its third purification, the serpent sheds its old skin, and appears with a new and philosophical body.

Philosophical Mercury needs two sublimations; the first
consists of separating from it all the gross superfluities: the second sublimation
gives it what it lacks, that is to say, the sulfur of Nature of which it has the grain and the ferment; for mercury contains all that is necessary for it, but it only has enough for itself; & if we want it to be in a position to provide it to other imperfect bodies, we must increase its sulfur & multiply it until the first door of the philosophical sanctuary is opened.

The light that shines around Venus, and the little horns of Diana, are guides that God presents to you to lead you into the garden of the Philosophers, at the entrance of which you will find a horrible dragon that you must defeat to penetrate to the source of the fountain which divides into seven streams.

He who seeks universal medicine outside the mineral kingdom is in error. We must look for the multiplication of metals in the metals themselves, and not elsewhere.

Perfect metals contain a perfect seed, but it is hidden under a very hard crust. He who can soften this crust with a philosophical softener will surely achieve the height of his desires;
but let us never lose sight of this essential point, that gold alone contains the seed of gold.

Philalethes says that the philosophical magnet is a mass filled with salt. Without this salt, it is impossible to calcine gold.

Hermes & other Philosophers say that martial mercury and antimonial mercury will never be able to incorporate and produce a perfect metal because of the opposition between antimony and iron; but he teaches a very simple way to make friends of these two opposite metals, in the following manner.

Take the regula whose composition we gave above; reduce it
to powder in an iron mortar, separate the slag and precipitate the regula; then pulverize the martial slag, put them in a crucible over an ember fire to evaporate the antimonial parts. This martial powder will have all the properties of calcined iron with common sulfur; it will resolve into a sour liquor, in which precious crystals of vitriol will form.

Then join this vitriol or martial mercury, which contains the soul of gold, with antimony mercury, or with non-mercurified regulus, and you will see the star of which Flamel speaks. The stars always appear according to this process, provided however that it is punctually carried out. They are dazzling & of different colors, depending on the weather, the season, the air temperature.

This martial mercury contains a devouring fire which appears when mixed
with a sulphurous earth impregnated with the spirit of dew.

All perfect bodies contain a mercury which contains a balsamic humor and capable of purifying quicksilver; but arsenical and external sulfurs are only slag which must be rejected, if we do not have the secret of purifying them in order to use them to purify other metals.

Although these sulfurs are impregnated with a soul of gold, However, they do not have the property of thickening and coagulating common mercury; they only attract what is of their kind.

The fire of gold alone is not sufficient to burn all the slag found in common mercury, which is amalgamated with the regula; the real cause of this insufficiency comes from the large quantity of
arsenical sulfur which is contained in the double mercury of the regula; but it can be
dissolved artfully and in a way that is quite natural, because it only attracts from common mercury what is analogous to it.

The regula of martial antimony, crushed with the same weight of antimony, makes a mixture which presents beautiful things. An eighth of common mercury is usually added to develop the martial antimony mercury, which, finding itself released and freed from its satellites, precipitates to the bottom of the vase, provided that nature is helped by digestion in a water bath, or with horse manure.

Martial antimony mercury always contains some parts of the primordial seed of gold; but the greatest disadvantage is that it is necessary to use common mercury to extract the mercury from antimony; without this the martial antimony mercury would find itself animated.

We will say, perhaps, that it would only be animated after many repeated purgations
, to deliver it from the various impure sulfurs which are contained
in antimony; but I can certify that the mercury extracted from the regula of martial antimony is entirely stripped of all impure and combustible sulfur, that only gold sulfur remains, which cannot be harmed by fire; iron, in the making of the regula, only spares the gold sulfur, and burns and destroys all the common and impure sulfurs.

To assure yourself of this truth, extract the sulfur from raw antimony, so that this sulfur extracted from the antimony resembles common sulfur, without any difference, and the antimony retains its external form. Melt this antimony, and throw into the crucible a piece of iron heated enough to throw sparks; do everything as if you wanted to make a regula of martial antimony; you will see that the operation will not succeed, and that the iron will remain intact. You will not succeed because the antimony is stripped of its combustible sulfur, by means of which the iron dissolves in the molten antimony.

But we will say, perhaps, that the germ of gold which is contained in iron is only a spirituous vapor, because it seems that Philalethes thinks so? I will respond to this, by asking in my turn, why does this volatile fire, which is not bound by martial mercury, not fly away in all the fusion fires that can be subjected to it, & why does nothing hold it back but antimony? Why does it abandon its former host, martial mercury, which is in antimonial mercury, & which is much more precious? Where does
this ingratitude come from? Why is this spirit of gold, without a body of gold, hidden in
iron alone, in the house of Aries? Why do we make such a beautiful regula with
iron? This is because it contains a good amount of gold sulfur.

Philalethes says, chap; II, that all those who have worked on copper have wasted their time, but that common and antimonial mercury contains a fermentative and active sulfur, from which a prepared grain can coagulate its entire body, provided that the impurities are separated from it. & terrestrialities. Although this seems very true, we should not follow this doctrine to the letter, this is the advice given to us by several enlightened Authors on this subject.

The generic matter & next in the mineral kingdom, is a substance which has the form of mercury; it is heavy like mercury. There is no doubt that this same substance has the virtue of reducing all
metallic bodies to mercury. All metals, says Arnaud de Ville-Neuve, are composed of mercury, and can be reduced to mercury.

Nature forms all metals with quicksilver, by means of a sulfurous substance: we are assured of this truth by coagulating mercury by the vapor of sulfur alone.

Géber also assures that quicksilver is the principle of all metals, and that it only coagulates by means of an arsenical sulfur.

The Philosophers speak here of metallic fluid mercury, without any philosophical preparation.

Common mercury is a gift from God, a precious thing that contains everything necessary in the magisterium. All the lower metals contain a part of this same substance; but she is impure. It is necessary to separate the gross superfluities by fire, and the sulfur which has the virtue of
determining into gold all the parts which surround it in the mining, develops.

This is why Bernard says that the solvent is not different from what we seek to dissolve, except through digestion and maturity which has converted it into metal.

There is no naturally reducible water which can dissolve metals;
quicksilver alone has this property, all other dissolutions cannot be of any advantage.

So join the raw mercury with its body, by means of a spirit, and the body will be dissolved in the first cooking; but be careful not to alter this mercury before joining it with his body; because it must remain in its metallic fluidity. It is only necessary to separate the slag, sublimating it with common salt.

Everything that is in natural proportion must remain in mercurial species in the work. We can make an intimate conjunction of martial antimony mercury with our body, by means of a particular sublimation, by which we manage to separate all the gross superfluities, and the result is a universal solvent, such that it is necessary to make the stone.

Philosophers do not advise using common mercury; they recommend, on the contrary, to make use of nitre salt, virgin earth , and other salts of all kinds; but they all forbid seeking anything outside the mineral kingdom.

If Hermes came to reveal matter to us, and put in our hands everything necessary for the magisterium, we would not be any further advanced if we were ignorant of the secrets of Nature; we would end where we should begin. If the Philosophers had not known all these difficulties, they would not have written in such an intelligible manner, although under the enigma.

Géber says that the mercury must be purged until it is very white; but he does not say what means are used to purge him in this way. The same Author adds that if we purify the mercury by making it subtle, we will have a white dye. It seems that he wants to indicate what this operation consists of, by saying that quicksilver has double sulfur and double humidity. One is contained in its center, where it is from the beginning of its mixture; the other is external & corruptible, which comes from various accidents to which he was exposed in mining. It is impossible to separate the first, because it tends to the perfection of the body, and makes the perfect sulfur which is contained in quicksilver incombustible; the other humidity is separable; but it takes hard work. Based on all these difficulties,
Géber advises taking the stone from another subject, which he says he indicated in the beginning of his Book; & he adds that anyone who does not have a penetrating mind will never succeed in understanding what he wanted to say.

Géber, Bernard, & Arnaud de Ville-Neuve, assure that all that is missing is coagulation & digestion of common mercury, which is in mining, to make a perfect metal.

The ancient Philosophers prepared their mercury by following the operations of Nature; they added gold to it, and matured it by observing the degrees of natural heat.

They added gold to their mercury, because it contains a different sulfur
from that which is contained in mercury, & because the sulfur of gold is more perfect, more mature & more digested than the sulfur of mercury. This is why the Artist is much more prompt in his operations than Nature.

Gold is nothing other than digested and coagulated mercury: therefore dry
the mercury and add gold to it; the mixture of the two sperms will produce the stone. This is done by an admirable conjunction, in the same way that Nature makes gold in the mines of Peru.

We only dwell on this matter because few people know it; those who understand this conjunction well, will be able, with the help of God, to achieve the accomplishment of the magisterium, the success of which depends entirely on the knowledge of a salt, which is easily recognized by the smell, as it
says Flamel ingenuously.

Philalethes is right to mock those who seek this salt in the dew of the month of May, and in the rainwater of the two equinoxes. Those who seek the mercury of the Philosophers in these things are wasting their time and their oil.

Remember well this axiom which will endure forever. Metallic mercury contains everything necessary for the magisterium. Riplé says that we must join the genus with the genus, the species with the species. Bernard adds to the reasoning of the previous one, that to create universal medicine, it is necessary to join two things of the same species, and that the whole secret consists in the union of fixed mercury with volatile mercury, or corporeal and spiritual.

We have already said, and we repeat it again, that all those who work outside the mineral kingdom are wasting their time and will never find anything; because it is not possible to make or perfect metals with something that is not metallic. Let us therefore never seek philosophical mercury outside the mineral kingdom. Anyone who wants to do research elsewhere will always be in error; All Philosophers agree on this essential point.

Philosophy with all its secrets cannot make a metal without using a metallic thing, as we see in the projection; although the stone is fermented with the purest metallic parts, it nevertheless never produces a perfect metal, if it is not first projected onto a perfect metallic body, which is analogous and sympathetic to it.

All the marvelous effects that the stone produces only come from the perfect conjunction & union of gold & silver, which have a great affinity together. Anyone who wants to do the opposite of what we have just said will be working against common sense, and against everything that chemical experiments can tell them.

Abandon therefore all your artificial salts; stick to natural salt;
you will recognize it by the smell, as we have already told you. You will see
that the Philosophers have spoken the truth, ensuring that salt and gold contain everything necessary for the composition of the stone.

Although we give this matter the name of salt of Nature, we must nevertheless not look for it in a subject which has the form of salt externally; listen to what Géber says: He who wants to seek the dyeing
of metals elsewhere than in quicksilver, enters into the practice like a blind man.

The mercury of the Sages is a very pure metallic substance, which contains
a spiritual sulfur by means of which the stone coagulates.

This metallic substance is twofold; it is dry & humid; it is only limited because it is decorated with its sulfur which causes coagulation, and which over time makes a perfect tincture.

Nature produces all metals in mining by means of a single sperm, by cooking & digesting mercury alone which contains two elements which are water and earth: water is active, and earth is passive.

Fire and earth exercise their empire in the same subject; but when digestion & coagulation are carried out, a metal results without the aid of any other foreign thing. The difference in metals depends on the different accidents; & when Nature is not disturbed in its operations, it makes perfect gold with common mercury alone, when nothing prevents it from separating the gross superfluities which it is almost impossible to separate by means of the 'art.

Mercury never incorporates with any metallic body unless it is subjected to perfect preparation beforehand. It is impossible to make a stable & perfect conjunction without the help of a mind. Adhesion is only found in minds, which alone can penetrate bodies ; but they must be purified, altered, sublimated, dried & exalted to strip them of all their impurities: after all these operations, we can extract from them the quintessence that suits the magisterium.

Mercury contains a cause of corruption in the terrestrial & combustible part with an aqueous substance. All these superfluities must be separated by means of fire, and, as Géber says, by mixing the
faeces. Consult & meditate on all the points of the doctrine of this Philosopher; he is the most intelligible of all the ancient Authors. If you are fortunate enough to understand it, you will see light emerge in the midst of the thickest darkness: you will see the treasure of all Philosophers;
but try to protect yourself from the infected odor that will come out of the sepulcher after you have opened it.

Wash the royal child until he is dazzling like the Sun, & you will admire what you have taken from the stinking tomb. You will see the Prince of all metals, the caduceus of Mercury. The snakes enclosed in the vase will absorb all the stench, and destroy all the poison with which the body of mercury is filled.

The basis of our double metal is that of the purest mercury & which has only one form.

Nature has opened several paths to us to achieve the accomplishment of the magisterium; because we have the dry way and the wet way.

The wet way is the noblest, the oldest & the easiest; but it is the most hidden. However, we will indicate it as much as possible.

Take the lead of the Philosophers, reduce it to first matter without adding anything contrary to it; this antimonial lead is a mixed metal which contains a sulfur of gold and silver. Make darkness pass into the mountain of false Venus; separate the fixed part from the volatile part by means of a suitable calcination, which you can do in a reverberator furnace or in a glass furnace, without fear of altering the material essential to the magisterium, because it is incombustible .

When you have thus prepared the antimonial lead or azoth of the Philosophers by means of fire, the water will penetrate all the interstices of the earth, and will form Homer's golden chain. The sentence of Hermes will be carried out, in that things below will be like those above.

As soon as your soil is impregnated, it will produce admirable flowers,
that is to say, the matter will be converted into philosophical mercury or water that does not wet the hands. This water will spawn several small fish. The first to appear will be the remore, a very small poison which nevertheless stops a large vessel as soon as it attaches to it. We then see the bird of Hermes appear in the air: the fire will make the seeds of gold and silver germinate, and we will see for a long time beasts walking on the earth and climbing to the top of the highest mountains, where you will see a golden and silver flower called Calendula appear. You will pick this flower and sacrifice it to mercury who will devour it with greed; as soon as he has eaten it, wings will grow on his feet and hands, and he will immediately ascend his throne, because the good are still mixed and confused with the bad who are murderers and poisoners who live in the earth philosophical.

The fire will destroy them all, & cause the flood, but Noah's ark must be well closed and well filled with all the provisions necessary for the subsistence of all those confined there; for we must not let them die of hunger, while they are buried in the waves.

At the end of fourteen days, the one who summons the demigods will appear full of joy to crown those of his subjects who are of his race. He alone will be the master of heaven and earth, and he will live until philosophical mercury is prepared and adorned with all the finery that God gave him at his birth.

Feed the royal child Prince of India with the meat he can digest:
you will be careful to give him the right proportion or quantity; because both excesses are equally fatal to him, that is to say, too much or too little. He must have suitable warmth, without sweating or being cold, otherwise the vegetation of the royal child could not be carried out, or if he took too much food, he would fly away.

According to this secret method, nothing foreign should be added to the mercury;
it is enough to separate all the superfluities, and we must abandon the rest of the work to Nature.

The Philosophers say that their azoth is a mineral electre; for the
metallic electre is a compound of several substances different from metals; but it is necessary to analyze this material to separate the three principles, salt, sulfur & mercury, each of which contains all the elements in particular.

The philosophical sulfur of Saturn is the father of all metals, although when
examining the lead of the Sages, when it comes out of the mine, we see
no trace of perfect metal; Nature has only lightly begun to operate in him, and thus left him imperfect to prevent him from falling into the hands of the impious, the avaricious, and the voluptuous, while he who has an upright heart, fearing to offend God, because he is infinitely good, he, I say, whose views are legitimate, will indeed discover this treasure through the veil which envelops him, but the impious will never find it.

Anyone who knows the generation of metals can easily find the azoth of the Philosophers with the help of the Lord; but he must pray & work diligently.

If this reasoning is not clear enough, you can read the works of Basile Valentin. This Philosopher will teach you the paths you must follow to arrive at the temple of Hermetic Philosophy; he will demonstrate to you all the operations from the preparation of the material by calcination to the multiplication of the stone; but I warn you that you will only find enigmas, allegories, especially when it comes to indicating the matter or stone of the Philosophers, which is found where the venomous vapors reside which indicate to you the place, the mine where you must search for our subject.

God created this metallic matter in our favor: we can extract from it a hard body, a fat crow, from which we must separate the superfluous parts to take only the core, which is a deadly poison, with which we can make a Alexipharmaque.

When you have made this separation, you will have a viscous,
metallic, diaphanous water, which does not wet the hands, which contains the germs
of gold and silver, or the true philosophical sulfur which is hidden in the
kingdoms of Saturn & Sun.

As soon as you have the good fortune of having an ounce of this material, you
will be able to multiply it infinitely, without being obliged to start the preliminary operations again; At the same time, you will have unequivocal proof that you are on the right path.

If you follow the wet method, you will cook the philosophical compound
more easily: you start with the first degree of fire, and increase it successively to the fourth degree to complete the rubification.

The dry method does not have the same advantages: we continually have to fear the glass vases breaking at the beginning of the operation, because of the internal fire which is contained in the volatile material which is not humid. By increasing the fire, we accelerate the fixation of the material; but too much heat causes the vases to break, the flowers to burn, and the matter to be completely destroyed.

He who has the good fortune to possess the universal tincture, knows human nature perfectly, and can cure all illnesses: he spreads health with the same rapidity as the Sun distributes its light.

Dyeing made by the dry method does not have such perfect advantages, because
it participates in the nature of dissoluble salts. That which is prepared by
the wet method consists of the simplicity of a single subject, which, by means
of a work, which is almost the same from the beginning to the end, produces this famous and unalterable solvent. , which reduces all beings to their first matter, which is philosophical mercury. All that remains is for me to show you how to cook it with pure gold.

The material that we use to dye by the wet method produces a double mercury which has the property of composing and destroying.

If we combine bodily gold with the first mercury, a perfect metallic dye results.

If, through ignorance, we combined gold with the second mercury, the gold would infallibly be destroyed and converted into volatile, medicinal salt, which, being combined with another substance, would still be converted into elemental water.

possible to separate them without subjecting them to proper fermentation.

God has made this admirable union, to maintain the world in the state in which we see it, so that at every moment we have before our eyes objects which make us think of another life.

Basile Valentin speaks of this double matter, in the article of the destruction
& separation of mercury.

It is not enough to know the material of the philosopher's stone and fire well; Furthermore, a skillful hand is needed to prevent the destruction of gold and build it up into power.

The whole secret consists in the preparation of the azoth, which must be constituted in putrefaction, if we want to make it suitable for generation. The Plowman & Sendivogius indicate to us quite clearly the means to succeed in this operation. They say that in the philosophical kingdom of Saturn, we see in a mirror all natural actions and the entire system of the world exposed: we recognize there all the operations of the magisterium, the generation of metals in the bowels of the earth, & the natural state of all beings subject to the influences of the stars.

But let's come to the second way of making stone using the dry method.

It will first be objected that vulgar mercury cannot become
philosophical mercury without reducing it to first matter, which is very difficult;
but we must clearly see that there is a big difference between a perfect metal
and an imperfect metal, between that which begins to become metal and that which is consumed metal.

If common mercury is really a metal, it is all the more suitable for the magisterium, and we can say that it has two metallic coagulations, the first of which is done by means of a good internal sulfur, and the second by external antimonial sulfur; both occur naturally according to the intention of Nature.

These coagulations being accidental, it is very easy to undo them; because if we separate the cause from the coagulation, the matter will soon resume its original form; but true metals are not in this case, because they are no longer in the class of flowing mercury.

Every perfect metal has undergone two coagulations by the effect of two coagulants;
separate one of these coagulants, and you will see what will become of the matter,
you will recognize that common mercury is not a metal, that it is rather the matter of metals, that it only lacks an agent for the coagulate & make it resist under the hammer. If then it is only the matter
or the principle of metals, we cannot say that it is really a metal.

This is why flowing mercury is not a metal, it is rather a metallic, spiritual water, which is suitable for metallic coagulation where it is received as in a natural matrix, where it demonstrates the effects of its power. See what Bernard, Arnaud de Villeneuve, Géber and all the ancient Philosophers say on this subject, who do not despise common mercury.

When you separate the impurities from the mercury, take care to reduce it to slag or black earth, as happens with martial regula, when it is fused with salts in too large a quantity, or when too much is added. of iron. When we do not observe the right proportions, a very pure regula becomes impure, and is entirely converted into arsenical slag.

Mercury is not always also loaded with impurities in large quantities, but it always takes a lot of time & patience to separate them. This is the most difficult point.

It happened several times to me to abandon mercury which I had reduced to black slag which seemed useless to me, and which the air, the influences of the stars, converted into beautiful flowing mercury in the space of a few days.

We make a philosophical double mercury in this way; but it is necessary to make the sublimations of common mercury with bodies which are analogous to it, and these same bodies must be chosen from the metallic kingdom, and must be somewhat fixed in themselves, without being malleable, like pyrites.

There are two sublimations, which barely differ from each other.

Flamel's process can be performed on this occasion.

Philalethes also spoke of these sublimations; it is a little obscure, and does not develop the material enough for a beginner; but here is the result of his process.

1°. We must give a link to mercury; this place must be in discreet proportion, so that it is not rather harmful than useful.

2°. You need a mineral & natural fire.

3°. It takes an unnatural fire.

4°. We must bring in the winged dragon.

5°. It is also absolutely necessary to obtain the Earth Dragon.

All these matters are entrusted to Neptune, under the auspices of Vulcan.

The winged and venomous dragon will poison all the beasts that are
in the sea, and will leave them to be eaten by the eagles and vultures.

The dragon will only forgive the sea unicorn; then, Saturn will travel the shore of the sea, and will kill all the beasts that he encounters in his territory, and will throw them into Tartarus.

Neptune will restore all its vigor to the exhausted snake. The earth dragon, at the same time, will cast a compassionate look on the marine unicorn exhausted with fatigue; he will revive her, become madly in love with her, and marry her.

They will live together, and will thereby become extremely harmful to all other venomous and non-venomous animals.

When the dragon has lived twice with the sea unicorn, it will die and exhale a stench so strong that in a very short time the land dragon will also die. Shortly after, a horrible storm will arise in the air: this storm will be caused by the bad vapors of sulfur, which will rise and cause a natural fire in the air; this natural fire will mix with the unnatural fire: this mixture will make a terrible noise; the air will be filled with vapors; the sun and the moon will be obscured. The eclipse will last
until the full moon has caused heavy rain to fall; Mercury will make peace, publish it, and display it at the gates of heaven.

Here is Bernard's explanation of the riddle.

All this is only a sublimation which is done by means of suitable bodies with which the matter of the Philosophers' stone must be sublimated, in a retort or a glass still; but the material must be calcined beforehand; because without this calcination, there is no dissolution to be expected.

All these operations are philosophical, and differ totally from
vulgar operations, although they appear to be of the same nature and agree together.

The common sublimation of mercury with metals proves this difference;
because it separates, so to speak, only a very small part of black earth, in comparison with the large quantity that is separated by philosophical sublimation. We would continue this operation for an entire year,
without separating any more slag, if we do not have the means that we use in our magisterium, because we need a subtle mediator who has the virtue of separating all harmful slag.

I will add that if you had the good fortune to succeed in sublimating gold, by means of
a certain manipulation which is possible and very familiar to the Adepts, you would not be any further advanced if you failed in a single point. essential. To succeed, you must, above all else, know pure, mineral & metallic fire, to purify mercury from all its arsenical, terrestrial & sulphurous parts.

Mercury, loaded with all its slag, receives the fire of which we speak
very easily, and it soon changes form,

It is Flamel's feeling that you will find consistent with the truth, as soon
as you are on the right path.

Everything we have just said on this subject is consistent with the doctrine of Philalethes, whose operation is very long, very stinking and very unhealthy, because of the antimonial-arsenical and sulfurous vapors that the materials exhale. must be used.

The process that we have just described is less time-consuming and less boring;
but it is not free from venomous vapors; this is why the Artist must always be on his guard, with a good counter-poison prepared.

We must obtain mercurial water from two very pure subjects; and if we cook this water for only two months, it will precipitate and set into gold.

Géber assures that metals have three principles, which are quicksilver, sulfur and arsenic, and that all coagulation must be attributed to arsenic and sulfur.

Philosophical mercury must be entirely stripped of sulfur and arsenic by secret manipulation, and this is why it loses its coagulative virtue and acquires the property of precipitating itself, without the help of gold.

If you amalgamate calcined gold with the mercury of the Philosophers, it will be converted, by a temperate fire, into a dazzling precipitate; you will be able to make gold with this mercury without adding gold, according to the Helmont process.

This mercury will rush into the earth without fire, and in the simplest way, if you have the patience to wait, you will have gold of good quality.

Any metal can be the subject of art; the object is the dye whose end is to produce gold; from this we can clearly see that the end results from the principle.

If, therefore, you want to make a metal, take the principle of the metal that you want to make. This is the sentiment of Sendivogius, who assures us that metals are made from metals. If you want to make gold and silver, look for the seed in these two metals; join species with species, & genera with genera.

Sendivogius says, that gold must be joined with mercury, as with a thing of its kind; but it must be specified & reduced to its first material; then, gold will no longer be vulgar gold, but philosophical gold.

It is obvious, from what we have just said, that the subject of Alchemy is a formal and material metal, because the germ of gold can only exist in gold.

Bernard says that stone can be made with all metals, but more easily and more quickly from one than from the others,

Sendivogius says that primitive Nature is contained in all metals, but that it is much more contained in some than in others, and that some are much more difficult to destroy than others, in order to extract
philosophical mercury from them.

Richard assures that Alchemy destroys the mineral mercury, and that it gives it a subtle form in the same substance that it had before; & Géber adds, that there are several paths which lead to the temple of Hermetic Philosophy. We can arrive there by the dry way and by the wet way: we must therefore conclude that there are several subjects from which we can draw the Mercury of the Philosophers, and nothing is more obvious or more certain.

We must therefore carefully examine the subject which contains the proximate matter and the one which contains the distant matter, and choose them to use according to the path we wish to follow.

According to Paracelsus, Roger Bacon, Basil Valentin, the two Laborers and several other Philosophers, the material which is suitable for the wet method is contained in a certain mineral subject which Nature has produced, and which she has left imperfect by default of application; but the matter is further away
in this subject which has remained such by the inaction of the agent on the patient.

The subject suitable for the dry route was modeled by Géber, Arnaud de Ville-Neuve, Bernard & Philalèthe. They all assure that the seven metals contain the mercury of the Sages, but they would have to have indicated the means that must be used to extract philosophical mercury.

We therefore see clearly that the subject of art is a metallic body destined by Nature to become gold, of the kind of which it must necessarily be, and that imperfect metals have remained such only by accident, by a mixture of heterogeneous things, or by a lack of cooking; but that they always have a disposition to become perfect gold. This is why it is necessary to separate the earthy and coarse parts, and the type of gold will remain in all its purity.

Gold is a very pure substance, which contains only a very pure mercury, which is cooked for a considerable time by its natural fire in its own sulfur, purified to the supreme degree, by means of which it is thickened with the help of external & moderate heat.

This is why the subject of the stone must of all necessity be of the same kind as gold; therefore we can take any kind of mercury, provided that it is very pure and has the nature of gold, except that gold is fixed, while mercury is volatile.

All Philosophers agree that to carry out multiplication of a being, it is necessary to conjoin it with its fellow man. Nature only multiplies in its own species, and not otherwise. Metals, for the same reason, can only multiply with metals.

All mercury, especially the common one, contains an incredible quantity of arsenical earth, very fixed, with a very small quantity of sulphurous & stinking water; separate all these impurities from common mercury, and then it will be a true philosophical mercury; but the work is difficult, and a dexterous hand is required.

The ancients sought two ways to convert common mercury into philosophical mercury: they said, that if common mercury was really an inferior body, philosophical mercury could be removed from it. Consequently, they used all known sublimations & purgations to deliver him from all his impurities. They sublimated it with salts, with distilled vinegar, with quicklime; but all these operations came to nothing. We must therefore conclude that the Philosophers have a particular way of working with common mercury, if it is true that they include it in the composition of the magisterium; but it is to be presumed that they obtain their mercury from a much more perfect metal. However, it is very certain that there is only one mercury in all metallic & mineral nature ; and that if vulgar mercury differs from philosophical mercury, it is only accidentally, and for the sole reason that one is pure, and the other full of uncleanness; but the basis of philosophical mercury is the same as that of vulgar mercury.

Mercury taken from any known metal or mineral is heterogeneous if it is not taken from gold; but it must be drawn according to the philosophical method. Gold must be prepared philosophically if one wants to convert it into philosophical mercury.

If those who believe that common mercury cannot be used to make philosophical mercury had seen our philosophical operations, they would correct their error: they would see that it is very possible to extract this arsenical earth from the core of common mercury. , which is the only thing that prevents it from radically uniting with gold to turn into putrefaction.

There is a double way of precipitating it into red powder with a violent fire. Géber & Bernard taught these two means, which are also found in the hermetic tomb.

But it is enough to know that mercury must be extracted from a
metallic substance, and it matters little whether we extract it from one or more
metallic substances; because in the philosophical preparation, only the pure substance of mercury remains which becomes homogeneous, as soon as it is freed from its arsenical sulfur; then, it is damp and does not wet the hands; it flows like wax over a light fire, and as soon as it is cooled, it hardens like a metal.

What Philosophers call tincture is nothing other than the sulfur of gold, which is cooked in its own mercury, by a suitable heat which exalts it to the supreme degree of purity and power.

Gold is nothing other than mercury thickened by the heat of its
internal sulfur, which is fertilized by external and moderate heat.

Also know that common mercury is materially composed of
elemental water which forms its entire basis. All this compound is just water & fire combined. The proof of this is obvious, in that it is reduced to water, by reducing it by a violent fire which destroys all its astral seed.

If we have the secret of separating from common mercury all that is heterogeneous,
we reduce it to alkaest or homogeneous mercury, by adding an elemental water which is destroyed in an instant.

The internal form of mercury must be essentially analogous to the element
of air and the stars which are of a fiery nature, because the celestial bodies continually dart rays of fire towards the center of the earth, against which they make an impact: they then rise passing through the body of elementary water, where they coagulate; & from this concretion there results the first admirable material which is the basis of all metals, which are cooked by an internal heat which circulates in the mines: but before this material has reached the degree of perfect metal, Nature must separate it a large amount of feces.

Gold is thus formed in mines from the sole substance of mercury, by
means of the internal fire fertilized by the external fire, and without the cooperation of
these two fires, mercury would remain eternally flowing.

All the heterogeneous impurities which are mixed in this coagulation only occur there by accident, and against the intention of the agent who carried out the coagulation, and who never abandons his work.

It is probable that the gravity of mercury comes from its seed and the
elemental water that it contracted as it thickened.

Elemental water coagulates by means of a particular astral sulfur into
an opaque and serious body called quicksilver,

Mercury contains an internal fire, and is at the same time surrounded
by an external fire in mining. This external and current fire is caused by the large quantity of igneous and sulphurous atoms which meet in the mines. These atoms received this property from the Author of Nature, to coagulate, fix & cook the mineral mercury, to make it a perfect metal.

Heavenly fire and terrestrial fire are of the same kind; they come together easily to compete together in the same operation. External heat associates imperceptibly with mercurial sulfur, or it takes on a body. At the time when this admirable operation of Nature is taking place, the coarse sulfur
which is found in the mercury begins to be separated from it, as if by
force, and is destroyed after a necessary time.

After this destruction of impure sulfur, the mercury is purified and whitened like snow.

Thus, the incorporation of a pure fire begins the work and does not abandon it
, if it is not prevented by some accident, before it has led common mercury to the degree of perfection of which it is susceptible. that is to say, before he had made it into perfect gold. This is why gold is homogeneous with all imperfect metals; but it is not the same with mercury, because it contains more bodily fire than all the lower metals. The cause of this difference must be attributed to the fire concentrated in the mercurial sulfur, where it became corporified; it agrees intimately with the aqueous matter of the mercurial body which is not yet so well incorporated as the essence of mercurial sulfur.

For the same reason, we can, by means of art, separate sulfur from gold, completely destroying this metal and preserving it in its entirety; it depends on the means we use. This truth will seem a real paradox to people who are unaware of the means used to make this separation; but it is very certain that fire is corporified on several occasions; We have unequivocal proof of this when we reduce the regula of martial antimony to ashes with the fiery mirror.

But let's return to the dye that we remove from gold or mercury which is homogeneous, without adding anything, to make this extraction; because if something were added to it, the tincture would no longer be homogeneous, and consequently could not enter into the composition of the magisterium.

Arnaud de Ville-Neuve says that we must not introduce water, powder, or any other material, so that we can be sure that the mercury we want to use has not been contaminated by a heterogeneous substance. so that the sulfur of gold can corporify, exalt & multiply in cold mercury.

When fixed gold is conjoined with volatile gold, according to the proportions
suitable, through the means of art, he first acquires a fixative,
penetrative virtue, and he becomes his equal in power and virtues. This is done by
two means, which are attenuation & cooking; because it is not possible
to lead it to this point of perfection, without the help of an internal
and external fire.

The volatile gold sulfur begins by insinuating itself little by little into the fixed or corporeal gold sulfur , where it always takes a rapid increase, provided that it encounters no obstacle; & by means of this fire, he reaches the highest degree of perfection of which he is capable; this is why Philosophers say that their tincture is the child of fire, because without fire, this child would never have seen the light of day. It is therefore obvious, from what we have just said, that there are really two metallic transmutations in the mineral kingdom; these transmutations are carried out by separating all the superfluities, by cooking the matter released from all its heterogeneous parts; the whole secret consists in the purification of mercury, to give it the strength to penetrate all metallic bodies. The first transmutation consists of the total destruction of the mercury which must be burned and reduced to ashes, to extract from it the soul or the quintessence which serves to exalt our tincture; but an agent is needed to alter the nature of the mineral mercury, and extract from it the only homogeneous part which illuminates metals in the same way, and as quickly as a candle sheds light in a dark room, when it is there. introduced; but with this difference that by removing the candle from this room, darkness will immediately replace the light.

On the contrary, our tincture being once fixed & concentrated in a suitable material, illuminates it forever, without distinguishing the quality or purity of the subject. All these marvelous qualities come from the exaltation and penetration of mercury which is of such great subtlety that it penetrates, in an instant, to the hearts of imperfect metals, to burn and destroy everything that exists. finds heterogeneity there. Mercury has a pure core that comes from elemental water, which is also found in imperfect metals. This water penetrates as quickly as lightning; but it produces much more astonishing effects; because it destroys & composes at the same time. It burns all the slag of imperfect metals, carrying, at the same time, the germ of perpetual light, which is a mixture of gold reincruded with the suitable menstruum.

When you want to re-incrude gold, never take the leaves from which it is usually used for gilding, because this gold is never without an alloy of copper or silver alloyed with copper; this mixture would make a green and poisonous solution, with which you would never do anything good.

From what we have just said, it is easy to see that Philosophers
only work on a single metallic subject which contains their true
mercury; but to make this philosophical mercury appear, the matter in which it is contained must be calcined .

Those who have some natural knowledge know that any perfect calcination necessarily produces a salt which must be removed from the ashes or lime from the calcined body. All salt is soluble or reducible in water; because salt is nothing other than coagulated water.

Thus, when the Philosophers say that it is necessary to reincrude the gold, to reduce the common mercury into raw material, to burn the mercury to extract the soul, all these expressions mean only the same thing, which is, to reduce into ash a material to extract the salt which easily resolves into water by itself.

A large number of Sophists embrace vitriol in all its substance;
they exhaust themselves drying it, purging it and dulcifying it to make it pass through
all the colors until the perfect red; they obtained a dye, because
almost all chemical operations lead to some discovery; but this dye can only dye sheets and canvas. Some have succeeded in making a vitriolic tincture to convert imperfect metals, not into gold, but into copper.

Other fairly enlightened chemists, moreover, have chosen antimony for
their material; they succeeded in separating from this mineral the solar part it contains; several have succeeded in making it starry, and making it show all the colors; they fixed it to extract the silver of the Philosophers which they amalgamated with precipitated mercury, according to the methods of Basil Valentin, who advises purging the gold with its cousin antimony. They always succeed in separating the sulfur from gold, and in releasing the silver flakes which are contained in the Hungarian antimony; but there are not two out of a hundred who are in a position to push their operations on antimony further; because those who wanted to volatilize the gold sulfur taken from this mineral, tormented it so much by amalgamating it with a thousand rubbish, that at the end of their sublimations, they could not even amalgamate it with silver .

But most Chemists strive to reduce antimony to
flowing mercury. This secret is real, and very beautiful; but it is possessed by very few people.

Those who worked with common arsenic succeeded in making red and white stones, while looking for ways to make gold.

The marcasites & the mineral cinnabar have not been forgotten; Chemists have found a way to extract an admirable mercurial water. They cooked this water with gold leaf for several years; but they were never able to dissolve their gold which remained intact, despite the torments
they made it undergo.

The Laboreur's excellent Treatise on lead did not fail to excite
emulation; but all those who wanted to follow literally the beautiful
process found in this book have failed.

After that, they used calamine stone, bismuth, white lead, talc, common sulfur; they have damaged these minerals to every extremity, and have entirely reduced them to useless slag.

Of all the metals, there is none that has been exposed to such cruel vexations as common mercury; it has been deprived of all the best that it contains; it was sublimated in a thousand different ways, then revivified, dissolved, coagulated, precipitated & calcined in a crude manner, to be
incorporated with the king of metals.

I have known several people who, having read in the books of the Philosophers, that the principle of metals is loamy or viscous water, wanted to make similar water with the spirit of wine, by mixing it with
earth. ; This resulted in a mucilage which was only suitable for cleaning clothes.

Others have caused the lower metals to putrefy to artificially compose this viscous water which circulates in the mines; after having worked this liquor for years, they digested it with
gold, believing themselves to be possessors of the universal menstruation; but their gold remained
intact.

Others finally obtained a particular mercury which they drew from
different salts and from several plants which they reduced to putrefaction, to extract the mercurial juice with which they believed to radically dissolve the gold.

We would make a tragedy in fifteen acts, if we wanted to represent all
the tortures that the Sophists inflicted on common Mercury.

Many people have attempted to reduce raw gold with refined niter salt, because Sendivogius wrote that niter has the property of dissolving gold radically.

But when Sendivogius spoke of the salt of nitre, he certainly meant the salt of metallic nitre, & not vegetable nitre; & this is very obvious, because a few lines further down, he adds that, if you want to make a metal, you have to use a metal, a dog begets a dog. You don't have to be very learned to see how Nature agrees.

The Emerald Tablet is allegorical throughout; when the Author
speaks of the wind, he only speaks of the wind which is enclosed in the philosophical egg.

There have been people simple enough to take salt of tartar to make the leafy earth of the Philosophers in which gold must be sown, because Raimond Lulle said that this leafy earth came from wine.

Others, not being able to find in things subject to the elements what they were looking for, took the elements themselves; they collected thunder rainwater which they made to putrefy in the air; they extracted a subtle vinegar from it, which they mixed with common fixed salt and oil of vitriol; this mixture provided them with crystals, by means of which they dissolved pyrites which they then froze into an admirable tincture.

Those who believed they knew the secrets of Nature worked on the dew of spring & on the snow, the virgin earth dug up to their knees.

They believed a hundred times that the fixed salt which they removed from all these materials
was the true philosophical magnet, because this salt has the virtue of attracting
humidity from the air, without paying attention that the magnet only attracts his
fellow man; & that to attract metallic humidity, it is absolutely necessary
to use a magnet of the same metallic type.

Let us therefore never seek the universal tincture outside the metallic kingdom;

let us never forget that we must use an incombustible material, since to prepare it by calcination, we must expose it to a streetlight fire, or in a glassmaker's oven. We often repeat this expression, so that it is remembered, because it is a fundamental & essential point.

The opinions of Philosophers are almost all different from each other. Some want the part to be joined to the part; others advise adding lunar humidity with graduated fixed silver and gold sulfur, to open the metals and extract the philosophical mercury.

There are recipes for composing a tincture of antimonial sulfur,
which has the virtue of converting common mercury into silver. Paracelsus gave such a recipe, and he assures that it can be made in the space of two months. The same Philosopher gave the means to make a tincture of gold with urine, to convert tin and silver into pure gold, better than that of mining.

We can easily make horsehair oil, with which we separate the silver
which is contained in the iron; but all these small processes only bring in
a very small amount of interest, which the poor can use to simply have the necessities of life.

The Philosophers had yet other reasons, in giving such processes: they were not unaware that the misers and the voluptuous, who only seek this divine knowledge to nourish their pride and satisfy their
unregulated passions, would not fail to having fun with these minutiae, not having the patience to wait a year to do a real operation; because all the operations we have just spoken about are only sophistications.

The Sophists themselves agree that, to ripen a metal in one way or another artificially, the aid of a dye is necessarily required. To reach this point of maturity, it is necessary to free the lower metals from their fixity, and reduce them to mercury by means of suitable cooking, and by the addition of a purgative and an external fire which, by itself, cannot reach the center of mercury, if it is not assisted by a celestial fire which reduces the power in action.

A gentle fire, such as is necessary for ripening, only acts in an open body, and cannot only touch a closed body.

There is only one way to open metals and make common mercury homogeneous; for the majority of Sophists only seek the means of fixing quicksilver in a malleable body, without taking the trouble to examine its nature; they incorporate it with an infinity of contrary drugs, and are
always frustrated with their hopes; but nothing can correct them.

We will therefore say, with truth, that there is no particular secret for the transmutation of metals, with the exception only of a means that we have for maturing quicksilver and some minerals; but this operation is long and not very advantageous.

The only particular that exists, for the conversion of metals, is the imperfect dyeing after the first rotation. The dye, therefore, only converts the purest part of the imperfect metal.

It is much better to read the works of Philosophers,
than having fun executing uncertain recipes; It is claimed that Basil Valentin found
the stone, while reading the Hermetic Museum.

Helvetius says that universal medicine can be made in four days,
with a pistole, without being obliged to use any vessel other than a crucible.

Basil Valentin indicates this path in his Keys, where he depicted the crucible,
the wheel, the lamp fires, the horse dung & the ash fire, paying no attention to the fires of flames, because of their violence.

It has escaped a Philosopher to say that a stone can be made in three or four hours; but it is good to know that there are two stones, one perfect, and the other imperfect; the perfect stone is known to very few people, and it is for this same reason that it has been given an infinity of names: those who know it have no other operations to do than to add gold or silver to specify & multiply it.

The stone that Basil Valentin says is found in all things, and contains all things, is an imperfect medicine whose composition he gave in his first six Keys; the other two following Keys
only teach multiplication in quantity and quality. If this stone is imperfect, it is only in relation to the great perfection of the other stone; because it is still perfect.

When the Philosophers say that we can make the stone in three days and
three hours, we must mean philosophical days and hours, which we will talk about below.

The difference in the ferment or sulfur of gold or silver which must be added to the
stone to put it in a position to produce its effect, is very little; because sulfur of silver costs as much trouble and expense as sulfur of gold.

The philosophical year is made up of the time that the philosophical sun uses to circle the world through all the houses of the zodiac, and the philosophical month is a revolution of the moon.

The philosophical week is the space of time used by the seven planets to pass successively one after the other in light and darkness.

The zodiac, which contains the twelve celestial signs, represents the twelve labors of Hercules, which consist in the formation of gold, by means of the first acid which is in the liquefied matter, & which goes around the twelve signs of the zodiac in the course of a philosophical year.

Silver is an alkali which, being in fusion, travels through all matter, & marries his brother with gold, in the philosophical egg, during putrefaction which lasts about a month. The reason for this is quite obvious; because there can be no putrefaction without liquefaction of materials, no dissolution without liquefaction, and no conjunction without dissolution.

Basil Valentin does not talk about mercury in his first six Keys; but we find an ample description of it in Philalethes.

If we examine these Keys carefully, we will see that the first represents Saturn or lead, water & earth; the second represents Jupiter or tin & fire; the third, Mars or iron, the fourth, the Moon or silver; the fifth, Venus or copper; the sixth represents a dazzling Sun, or the purest gold. We see in the last Key, an assembly of the four elements. The sixth represents the marriage of gold; & the seventh, its coagulation.

When we melt the lead of the Philosophers in a crucible, we must add a part of our spirit to it, to multiply it in the same way that it multiplies in mining, where the mercurial spirit coagulates and is converted into lead . This is why mercury never coagulates without the odor of lead, which becomes a very good tin, after having undergone certain operations of Nature, which does not abandon it for that; because it then makes iron, copper, silver; & when it encounters no obstacles in mining, it makes perfect gold. When we are fortunate enough to succeed in this operation, we make light appear, and we completely dissipate darkness. Separate the slag that will float well; but do not despise them, for they are precious in the eyes of a true Chemist.

Pour the molten material into another crucible, which you will strike several times with a stick to precipitate the regulus and make the rest of the slag float. If you are a little intelligent, you will see the philosophical daylight appear, the star which sheds a celestial light, which proves the existence of a Heaven which we cannot see with the eyes of the body.

We find the description of the lead of the Philosophers in Ovid's Metamorphoses; this metal contains all the other metals in confusion, and they can be easily separated by fusion.

It is obvious that a crucible, and not a glass vase, is needed to make the first preparation or calcination of the Philosophers' lead. It takes a violent fire, and an intelligent person to direct it; & when matter is converted into philosophical mercury, it is necessary to introduce an innate Agent, to make him develop externally what he contains within himself.

When you are a little more advanced in Philosophy, you will know easily determine the fire levels you need to use. You will see that philosophical operations are very different from those of vulgar Chemistry.

If you know how to explain the riddles of Hermes well, when he says: bring down the things that are above, and bring up those that are below; if you know how to explain all these enigmas well, I say, you are not far from the truth; continue the same path, pray, work, & you will be rewarded.

Melt everything that the Philosophers' lead will give you, you will be careful to collect the slag that will come out during the fusion, you will see everything that is above and everything that is below; you will see the Doves of Diana, of which Philalethes speaks; & if you have a slightly attentive ear, you will hear the song of the Swans swimming in a deep pond, where many imprudent and clumsy Chemists have drowned.

Melt the lead of the Sages, to convert it into regula without iron; because our King wants to enter the baths of Diana alone; repeat this operation up to three times, and you will see the difference between the martial regula and the iron-free regula. To educate yourself, do the following operation, and think about the effects that will result from it.

Make a martial spelter according to the process we gave above;
add to it half a part of silver; melt everything together, and throw it
into etching, you will see that a black powder will precipitate, which is the same as that which Beuher found in his sand mining, and that it is impossible to reduce it to fusion; you will see from this, that those who think that the martial regula only retains the sulfur of gold which is contained in the iron, are in error.

The experiments that can be done with the lead of the Sages are very inexpensive ; this metal is purified in a crucible, with salt of niter and salt of tartar; &, if we wish, we will always extract a few particles of gold and silver.

We can acquire a lot of knowledge by making a lead regula of the Philosophers with an eighth of iron, and the same amount of gold or silver. Then melt any metal, & add to it some parts, like an eighth, of the above regula; put particles of gold regula in silver regula, or in copper regula, & you will see admirable metamorphoses, copper will become as beautiful as silver, by means of a few particles of silver regula , & the silver regula will become as beautiful as pure gold,

Heat a piece of silver in a crucible, without melting it; throw gold regula powder on your silver, cover the crucible, leave it on the fire for a quarter of an hour, your silver will become as beautiful as
gold, because it will become saturated with gold volatile which is found in the regulator.

I did other experiments to educate myself. I melted lead which had been, for a century, at least, at the top of a house; I threw a few pieces of gold regula into this lead, and I saw admirable things; I kept it molten for two hours; I thought he would fall into slag; but the opposite happened; it was purged of all its refuse, suffered only a very small reduction, like a twentieth,
and was changed into a completely different metal.

When this regula is made by a somewhat experienced Artist, it contains real potable gold, which can be administered to men without danger.

Flamel says that we can make the true philosophical mercury with the gold and silver regulus, if we can succeed in conjoining them perfectly by means of the first metallic agent. If this conjunction is truly philosophical, we discover a mystery which proves that we have got our hands on the
real lead of the Philosophers.

This lead must be converted into butter; it is a comparison by Basil Valentin, to suggest that the gold and silver regulae must be reduced to mercury by means of the universal menstruation.

The same Author assures that the lead of the Philosophers contains the mercury
of the Sages, and that those who wish to seek it in another subject will waste
their time, and will never achieve the accomplishment of the magisterium; but the preparation of this material is very scabrous and very dangerous because of the deadly poison it contains. It takes a very dexterous hand to work it; but I will help you as much as I can; I will show you the path that leads to the Skippers Garden, where you can
pick the golden apple.

Remember that the lead of the Philosophers contains an
aerial, mercurial, hot, mixed, & dry humidity. This matter is arranged &
prepared thus by the stars; it is the rays of the Sun & the Moon which
have given it all the properties it contains.

Here is the egg which contains the bird of Hermes; hatch this egg, and you will see the bird come out of the shell: feed it with suitable food,
take care to enclose it in a good cage; you will see it grow visibly, & hear him sing.

Basil Valentin indicates the lead of the Philosophers in the form of an old man
who is covered with leprosy, & burdened with many internal diseases. This material will never provide the slightest advantage to those who want to use it in this state; it is absolutely necessary to strip it of all the rubbish with which it is covered, and to purify it well by the fire of calcination with a violent fire.

Those who claim to find in common mercury, everything that is necessary for the magisterium, are still far from the true goal: they are still unaware that the sulfur of the Philosophers is this warm-humid, aerial, volatile, hermaphrodite spirit, that
Ovid described under the name of acidic volatile alkali in his Metamorphoses, where we see that this hermaphrodite is the double mercury which contains the sulfur & salt of the Philosophers, as well as the fixed alkali. All these things are found in the royal lead of the Philosophers; but they are in confusion and mixed with an incredible quantity of heterogeneous materials which must be separated skillfully, and leave only the pure quintessence in which the gold is dissolved, to then be resurrected and clothed in the royal mantle, before to get out of the philosophical bath.

Philosophical mercury settles, coagulates, precipitates and is successively revived by means of suitable heat.

Know what the Philosophers mean when they say that their King must die; philosophical death is the coagulation & fixation of matter, which becomes fixed, from the volatile that it was before. The king is volatile; you have to fix him and he will be dead; we must then resurrect him, so that he can ascend to heaven; this is absolutely necessary: ​​because what is fixed cannot penetrate metals.

This is why it is necessary to restore life to the King when he has been put to death; that is to say, when it is fixed, it must be made volatile, and it will have a great penetrative virtue.

The black color announces the death of the King, the white announces his resurrection.
You currently know what the Philosophers mean when they say that we must blacken and whiten: the white stole represents the Angels, because of their wings and their volatile spirit.

When the stone has reached the perfect red, it is so volatile that if it happened that the egg were to crack even a little, the bird of Hermes would take flight and leave with incredible rapidity, and without it is possible to notice it; but this only happens with the help of external heat. This is why we take care to wrap the projection powder in wax, to project it onto a molten metal. Only a mediocre fire is required to make the projection on quicksilver or lead, and as soon as the projection is made,
lid of hot coals. The fire is thus made on top, to prevent the medicine from flying into the air, and to make it penetrate and transmute the mercury or lead that has been properly heated in the
crucible.

Do not always conclude definitively after inspection of the colors, to abandon the work; because you will only be able to judge the effects by the colors after having accomplished the magisterium.

When our earth is black, it must be washed with water, and it will become
white with the help of the superior air which is a celestial fire which will lead your matter to perfect red.

The color black is the symbol of death, as we have already said; but as soon as the King is resurrected, he is surrounded by a brilliant light, which is of such great purity that it is compared to that which continually surrounds the Angels who are spirits of the nature of fire.

The smell of death or corpses is abominable and unbearable; the stinking smell of rotting stone announces its fixation; the sweet odor indicates volatilization, & the heat is the symbol of resurrection & life.

The purer and warmer the air, the more pleasant the smell exhaled by the plants. The aromatic plants of Arabia receive their perfumes from the air of this country, where it is very pure. We imitate Nature by means of art with simple digestion.

It is impossible to enjoy good health naturally in all places where there is impure & unhealthy air.

When human excrement leaves the body, it does not give off a pleasant odor; but after they have gone through putrefaction & fermentation, they acquire an odor very different from what they had before.

It is impossible to achieve the accomplishment of the magisterium without using the double fire of which Basil Valentin and several other Philosophers have given the description. The first is an earthly fire which is a fixed body, the other is a heavenly fire which is a volatile spirit. The latter fire is hotter than the Sun, and the first is much less hot than this star.

Chemists know several other fires: some are cold, others hot, and others are humid. The cold fire is mercury itself which is volatile & female, the hot fire is sulphurous, fixed & male.

We still know of other fires; some are internal, like those which are contained in matter, and which common chemists take for external fires. There are external fires, like those which will arrive at the end of the philosophical world, to carry out the test with the lead in the cup. Basil Valentin gives the quality of supreme judge to this fire, because of the elevation of Saturn above the other Planets. The same Philosopher also calls it the fire of Etna, and the fire of hell.

Philosophers' Vinegar is a very precious liquor after it has been distilled & rectified by a skillful Chemist. This vinegar is violent & beneficial all at the same time. It has the virtue of quickly drawing the dye from coral and all metals, because it is composed with a material which contains the first fixed acid or sulfur, the first fixed alkali which must be distilled with the spirit of wine of Saturn; this vinegar is drinkable after the fourth distillation; but it would be much better to use it to make universal medicine by cooking it with gold, than to lavish it by using it for other uses.

The Philosophers use no other liquor than this distilled vinegar;
this is what they call their alkaest which dissolves all metals, removes the dye without altering it in any way; & as soon as we have the happiness of possessing this tincture, we already have a sovereign remedy to cure many different illnesses, without it being necessary to pass it through the philosophical wheel. I mean that with this vinegar or universal menstruum, we can, in one day, extract the tincture from calcined gold, and that we can make use of part of this tincture, while we are cooking the the other part to make it universal medicine.

We will succeed in making the distilled vinegar of the Philosophers, as well as the stone, if we are enlightened enough to hear or understand the doctrine of Basil Valentin, the greatest of all modern Philosophers. A large number of good chemists, moreover, after having superficially read part of the works of this great man, wanted to undertake the work of stone, and failed because they did not put order into their operations; most of them operated with real matter, the real lead of the Sages, and
were no more advanced for that.

After having lost their time, their money, and what is infinitely more precious, I mean their health, these kinds of Chemists, who do not want to take the trouble to make instructive experiments, who would like finding the details of all the operations of the stone in a subject, after having failed, or having crippled themselves, end up saying that all Philosophers are so many liars, deceivers, who have led them into the deplorable state in which they have reduced themselves through their fault. Basil Valentinus is the one who suffered the strongest attacks of insulting slander, while it is the one of all the European Philosophers who deserves the greatest praise in all respects. No one has spoken of the stone before him, in such a clear and positive manner, although under the veil of enigma; on each page, we see that this holy man breathes only for God, and that he loves his neighbor very tenderly. He would like to give the stone to all those who fear the Lord. We can clearly see that he is not trying to deceive, since he complains that he is not allowed to speak other than in allegories.

Indeed, all of Basile Valentin's works are allegorical & filled
with ingenious fictions. His very name, and his status as a Benedictine Religious, are so many fictions and allegories; because Basil, derived from Basileuj, a Greek word which means King, clearly indicates the material which must be converted into the regula from which the Philosophers' mercury is made. Valentin announces the force, the power of universal medicine which penetrates man, changes him, renews him, and makes him in some way spiritual, because of the spiritual essence of philosophical mercury. He calls himself a Brother of the Order of Saint Benedict, because he needed this title to carry out his allegorical design, and to make it known that the King or gold spreads the celestial blessing on his indigent brothers the imperfect metals to which
he communicates a very pure ethereal essence.

Basil Valentin personifies philosophical mercury, as well as all the metals, and he makes them speak. He wishes them all a celestial blessing, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, or the mercury of the Philosophers, the universal solvent of all metals, without corrosive, of which he speaks in his first and second Key. He then makes Jupiter or tin speak with mercury which has already passed through the sphere of Saturn or lead. Jupiter glories in being clothed in the robe of Mercury, forgetting that he once wore the dirty robe of Saturn: this indicates nothing other than philosophical progression, which is so rapid that in an instant matter changes totally in all its substance.

This Philosopher continues his prosopopeia; Mercury continues his speech addressed to his brothers whom he has healed, and to the gold reincruded or reduced to first material, by means of the universal menstruation, which brings together the spirit,

Mercury is considered as a world placed above the heavens, where the root & source of life is found, & it is what is called the first mobile, which Basil Valentin considers as a celestial world, which is the spirit or the elemental sulfur of salt. The inhabitants of this celestial world are the metals which have not yet been purified by philosophical mercury converted into universal medicine with reincrusted gold.

Basil Valentin having thus personified all the metals, which he places in the celestial world, supposes them to have laws, a religion, a faith, of which the Chemist must have perfect knowledge; he must know that the azoth or lead of the Philosophers, is the magnet which attracts the mercurial spirit by such an admirable sympathy, that they unite so closely that it is no longer possible to separate them one the other.

Of all the metals, there is none which is not obliged to recognize Saturn or lead as its father; this is why he is the first who knew the faith of mercury. Our Philosopher assures, that all metals must have this faith, that is to say, that they are all subject to Saturn; gold is no more exempt from it than all imperfect metals, since it cannot be passed through the cup without the help of lead.

All this means nothing other than the sufficient knowledge that the Chemist must have to separate the good from the bad, the pure from the impure, and incombustible sulfur from combustible sulfur.

The greatest light of Chemistry is the wisdom that must shine in the
darkness. This wisdom is the celestial sulfur of which he speaks in the seventh Key.

God has granted the Chemists great power in their heaven; it is easy
to be convinced of this by examining their theology.

The old man who preaches to the People represents Saturn or lead and the first metals. This old man is nothing other, in the sense of Basil Valentin, than the salt of the earth, which continually exhales a saline vapor which unites with mercury.

We have already said that our Philosopher had personified all metals;
This is what we must not forget, if we want to explain the enigma well.

All metals, especially imperfect ones, must be good theologians. They must not ignore anything concerning their faith, so that they are able to distinguish the mercurial spirit which is attracted to them by a martial magnet. Here is the mercury of the Philosophers and their magnet, which is a steel capable of attracting the igneous spirit of the salt of the earth, and all that is necessary for it to be able to dissolve gold radically, and convert it into quintessence without
alter it. This is the explanation of the fifth key.

The sun that lights up the Chemists’ sky is igneous & volatile sulfur.

There are many Chemists who believe they have a perfect knowledge of metals; but there are very few who are not in error. Most attach themselves to copper to extract the dye, unaware that the sulfur in
this metal is not fixed, and that it flies into the air as soon as it is on the fire: they flay this metal , & remove even the last bark, with contrary additions which attract its phlogiston to destroy it with corrosives. They sometimes even reach the heart of Venus, which they mercilessly put to death, by extinguishing its vital fire.

Géber, lib. 2. ch. 14. makes fun of all those who waste their time looking for ways to extract tincture from copper.

When the Philosophers say that gold must be opened to the heart, this means that it must be radically dissolved by means of philosophical mercury. What Basil Valentin calls the West is nothing other than revivified mercury , which rises again with a glorious body; but it must be decorated with an ornament taken from the southern part, that is to say, from gold sulfur which has an infinity of properties.

The seal of Hermes is the knowledge of the true mercury of the Sages, because this mercury is the chancellor of Hermetic Philosophy.

The king's indigent brothers are, as we have already said, imperfect metals: I will abandon my treasures to help you, my very dear brothers, says the king, or gold, to imperfect metals; you are poor, because you have no fixed sulfur; I will give you all a crown of pure gold.

The fire which heats indigent metals is nothing other than the fixed sulfur of gold reduced to saline quintessence. This sulfur must warm them without altering their minds.

The thick clouds which rise in the philosophical egg during cooking
are nothing other than the mercurial humidity which is disposed at the conjunction.

These clouds are of great help in practice; they announce to the Artist
that he is on the right path. Basil Valentin made them known to us through obscure parables; but we will try to shed some light on it.

When the Philosophers speak of quicklime, in the practice of stone, we must not believe that they advise using quicklime, made with stones or pebbles. The lime they mention is a philosophical lime, which is nothing other than philosophically calcined gold, and of which only the spirit must be taken.

Basil Valentin teaches the preparation of this lime in his fourth Key.

The spirit of this quicklime is the same thing as the spirit of the kneaded dragon. This is what we recognize in the second Key, where we also see an eagle which represents mercury; this vinegar of the Philosophers, alpha, omega, aleph & thau, quicklime, kneaded dragon, martial salt & its crystalline & igneous spirit reduced to liquor.

The sulfur of Venus is the disciple of Mars, as we notice in the eleventh Key, where the Author dwells a lot on the good offices that the planets render to metals.

The third Key contains a description of the purple cloak for the greatest king on earth; this color is produced by fire, after proper cooking.

Purified common mercury may be compared to crystal for beauty; but the mercury of the Philosophers is infinitely more brilliant than crystal, because it is taken from a very good metal, of which we only take the purest quintessence, which is as beautiful as a star after we have burned all the garbage surrounding Azoth when leaving the mine.

After the igneous spirit of the kneaded dragon or quicklime has resolved the mercurial crystal into liquor, Saturn, who is colder than ice, coagulates this liquor, & at the same time cuts the wings of mercury; the eyes of the crayfish;
like philosophical money, falls into dissolution, a short time later, by means of a benign heat.

Philosophical silver is an alkali which has the virtue of dissolving stone in the bladder and calluses; it is at the same time a sovereign remedy to cure gout, even if it occurs, and many other diseases. If Medicine knew this remedy, it would derive a much greater advantage than that of all the potable gold it possesses: because common Chemists are ignorant of the true preparation of the gold they wish to dissolve. They can make potable gold, but they will never make philosophical potable gold, of which they can make imperfect metals swallow a drop; while they eagerly drink that which we present to them, they are satisfied with it, heal themselves of all their illnesses, and acquire perfect health.

Philosophical drinking gold is prepared with philosophical mercury from which only the purest spirit and quintessence are taken, which also serves to corporify the universal tincture.

The corporeal part of gold is the fixed saline sulfur which is reduced to spirit and water, which must be combined with the spirit of philosophical sulfur to make an incombustible oil, which cures all diseases of metals and minerals. animals.

The metallurgy of Basile Valentin, focuses on the metals that exist in mining. The hospice of metals, in general, is in their damp radical, which contains philosophical gold, the martial magnet & its sulfur, which penetrates vulgar gold & reduces it to first matter.

The three kingdoms, animal, vegetable & mineral, among the Philosophers, are salt, sulfur & mercury. These three things enter into the composition of universal medicine: the soul of philosophical sulfur is united with gold, by means of the spirit of mercury.

There is a true philosophical sulfur in all metals, without excluding a single one. Without this, it would not be possible to convert them into gold with universal medicine. Basil Valentin gave a fairly ample description of all the metals in the first six Keys.

Although we have already spoken, at the beginning of this treatise, of the influence of the stars on all metals, we believe that what we will say about it, according to Basil Valentin, will not displease our Readers: this knowledge
is absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to undertake philosophical work
. Hermes and all the other Philosophers say that there is a
perfect harmony between the things above and those below;
& that anyone who does not have perfect knowledge of this union will
never achieve the accomplishment of the magisterium.

Mercury is not placed among the planets among the Philosophers, although it is the principle of universal medicine because of the triple salt it contains. Its caduceus, with the two winged serpents, represent the fixed & volatile spirit it contains.

Virgo Mercury marries with Virgo, & is incorporated with Gemini
in virginal milk; because everything that enters into philosophical work
must be very pure. See Philalethes, chap. 10, on this subject. He rightly mocks those who go looking for virgin mercury in the Gulf of Corinth, while they have it under their feet, and all they have to do is open the earth to take it. It is no less ridiculous to see people looking for virgin soil at the bottom of muddy ponds.

Let us therefore never lose sight of this truth, that philosophical mercury is formed in the bowels of the virgin earth, where it then coagulates by the smell of lead.

Gemini indicates the hermaphroditic nature of mercury, which contains
the universal, sulphurous, volatile spirit, which coagulates as soon as it is conjoined with the spirit of the fixed salt of the earth. If this spirit of salt is pure, clear & transparent, it results in a crystal which hardens over time.

Mercury is the material of stones as well as metals; both come from the seed of mercury which was coagulated by the lead vapor. Basil says that this coagulation must be called imprisonment.

The cold which is found in the bowels of the earth is also one of the causes of this coagulation, according to Basile Valentin; & according to Sendivogius, all coagulation must be attributed to the internal heat of the earth. Let us grant these two great men.

All water coagulates by heat when the water contains no spirit, and when it has a spirit, it freezes by cold; for it is impossible to freeze water which is united with a spirit by heat; & he who could carry out this operation would be a thousand times more skillful than he who converts imperfect metals into pure gold.

For the same reason, he who could freeze the mercury of the lead of the Philosophers with the igneous sulfur of Mars regulates it, in fusion, by means of niter & tartar; he, I say, who would make this discovery, would have done everything necessary to be the possessor of universal medicine,
the success of which depends on an unnatural conjunction. This is why there are a large number of good Alchemists, moreover, who have worked on the true matter of stone, for thirty years, without success, for not having been able to succeed in making this secret conjunction, of which the Philosophers cannot never gave the slightest idea. Consult Hermes, Philalethes & Flamel, and you will see what they attribute to the land of Saturn.

The first day of the year begins on the first night of winter. The age of man is only counted from the day of his birth: in the same way, the age of metals is not counted while quicksilver runs from side to side; but from the moment of its coagulation.

Basil Valentin, in his first Key, represents Saturn or the lead of the Philosophers, as the father of the first mercury, which it contains in itself, and which is already coagulated. It is the first of metals, and therefore the principle of the stone of the Sages; it is he who causes putrefaction, without
which mercury would not open, and could never receive the spirit of Mars. Saturn opens this passage with the scythe that the Author of Nature gave him. He cuts, with this instrument, all the impurities of the metals, separates all the combustible sulfur, and then causes the putrefaction which is indicated by the black color.

The whiteness and purity attributed to Jupiter is nothing other than the aqueous humidity of Saturn, which dries up and destroys all the superfluities found in the material of the stone.

Philosophers distinguish three fermentations; the first takes place, when mercury is animated by its sulfur, the second arrives when the animated mercury is nourished by its salt, which is the red & green lion which are joined by philosophical fermentation, of which Basil Valentin speaks, pag. 275.

The third fermentation consists of the resurrection of the king, or revivification of gold, which precedes the multiplication of the stone, which is obliged to ferment with gold or silver. This
chemical fermentation is attributed to Jupiter, & it is entirely aerial. The first fixation of Jupiter is indicated by the first whiteness that appears.

We have already demonstrated above that Mars or iron salt is an auxiliary magnet which attracts celestial influences. Mars must be considered as a fiery mirror, or as a brilliant ruby; his halberd & his sword represent the igneous & volatile spirits, which are the symbols of penetration. This is what the ancients represented by the sword of Cadmus, son of Agenor, King of Phoenicia, and by the sword of Achilles.

Jupiter, the Lion of the East, and the Bird of the South, must enter our salt sea and drown there.

Basile Valentin, p. 34, says that we must look for the sulfur of the Philosophers in a sulfur; but that it is not possible to find it, unless the body of this sulfur, which is vulgar, is absorbed by the petrified dragon, which is the spirit of philosophical niter salt and ammonia salt.

These two philosophical salts must be calcined in a lamp furnace or in a glass furnace, where they acquire a magnetic virtue, analogous to the astral influences with which they must be impregnated to enter the composition of the stone.

Basile Valentin did not write a word by chance; everything is reflected in his works; the slightest expression contains sublime things beneath the enigma.

His fiery mirror is a means he presents to discover what is contained in his fifth Key.

The celestial mirror is the image of sulfur which develops its spirit by means of a heat analogous to that which is produced by the reflection of a fiery mirror, which returns everything it receives, as by a reciprocal friendship. The sword of Mars is also, in turn, a fiery mirror which reflects the
celestial & igneous sulfur, by the force of its fixed salt. Mars wins a complete victory over the igneous mercurial spirit, from which he separates all the impure sulfur, which would become rebellious when the sulfur of the first double mercury begins to ferment. Impure sulfur provokes Mars into battle; but he is soon put in prison & delivered to Vulcan, who kills him with the sword of Mars,
incombustible, which are absolutely necessary for the composition of the magisterium.

The strength of Mars is so great that he gains a complete victory over double mercury, through the effectiveness of his spirits or his quintessence, which has the virtue of considerably increasing the strength of the one who takes the weight of it. 'a grain in wine spirit or good brandy.

This Martial quintessence quickly produces its effects; it does not limit itself to giving strength; it gives the feelings and courage of a lion.

March dominates in the spring season, which is the season of flowers; but we must not pay attention to the flowers of plants. Philosophers advise us to take care of the chemical flowers that emerge from the ashes of Saturnian matter after calcination.

These chemical flowers are the true saffron of metals; Most Chemists burn this saffron by making a fire that is too violent.

Basil Valentin wrote two chapters on the soul and the tincture of Mars and Venus; but all those who wanted to operate from reading and deep meditation on these two chapters have failed, because they are
made for philosophers, and not for vulgar chemists who will never understand anything.

Philosophers attribute the fixation of matter to the brilliant spirit of Mars, for white only, although this spirit is igneous, red and double.

The fourth Key teaches the true method of calcining silver which must be dissolved in philosophical mercury. The Moon precedes Venus in its entrance. The Author says that gold and silver are the children of Mars and Venus; this is what we read in his Book on the admirable birth of the seven planets, p. 247, or he says, that it is necessary to conjoin Mars with Venus, or iron with copper, to compose a vitriol from which we extract a white spirit; & that from this same white spirit, after suitable cooking, we remove a red spirit which is a true philosophical golden sulfur. Such examples can provide great insight; but you have to know how to take advantage of them. We should also not ignore that the fifth Key is entirely devoted to Venus. Basil Valentin had good reasons for placing the preparation of silver after that of mercury, father of all metals.

It is essential to know that the Author includes two Venuses in the composition of the stone. The first Venus is mineral, the second is metallic & philosophical, which is nothing other than the quintessence or
sulfur of red copper; but one must be very skilful to extract this quintessence without altering it.

Philosopher, when he says, that the Martial salt & the salt of Saturn conjunct with Mercury & the Moon, elevate Venus to the supreme degree of splendor. This mixture or conjunction is done spiritually & with the greatest harmony.

Silver is raised, in its turn, to the supreme degree of purity; it is so dazzling that we no longer recognize it for what it was before.

Fire, which is considered a great secret, is contained in the salt
of Mars, which Cadmus calls inextinguishable flame.

Harmony comes from the spirit of Venus which is burned by the fire of Mars. Both are enveloped in the iron net by Vulcan, who binds them so well that it is not possible for them to get rid of them; & Mars converts Venus into a dazzling Sun, as seen in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Anyone who understands this well will be able to easily acquire the other knowledge necessary for the magisterium.

The Philosophers indicate two fixations of Venus for making a red dye, & they all agree that copper contains a more abundant dye than even gold.

Money is the first to appear on philosophical earth, after the resurrection of the body; philosophers call it their white queen, their Moon; its horns are white, and those of the Sun are red. It is the philosophical girl newly born & engendered with gold & the spirit of Mars, prepared with vitriol, who must be reduced to a body. Basile Valentin teaches a safe method for making this reduction. The celestial sign of the Moon, or silver, is Virgo, which converts mercury into pure silver; but it must undergo many operations to put it in a position to enter the composition of the magisterium. It must be given perfect whiteness by calcination; but this color is only external; silver, whether calcined or not, is always blue internally. This comes from the conjunction of luminous water with cold earth.

If you join calcined gold with silver, prepared as above, and the Lion impetuously throws himself into the breast of the Virgin, carry out a suitable digestion, and you will see that the silver will become more beautiful than gold itself, into whose nature it will be converted.

This admirable graduation is done by means of vitriol or Venus, which gives its purple coat to silver, which receives this ornament by the addition of the sulfur of Mars, when it is not yet fixed, but for
to make this graduation stable, it is necessary to bring into play the sulfur of Saturn or the lead of the Sages.

This is the real method that must be followed to graduate money. This in two words is what the Sophists were never able to say in their folio volumes.

We can see, from what we have just said, that silver only becomes truly white by the calcination of its earth, which must be reduced to ash, so that we can have the means of extracting the fixed salt from it. . The tartar of the Philosophers is only found in ashes: with ashes and sand we make glass, and the hardest stones are converted into quicklime by burning them. All these things, well understood, are enough to demonstrate the necessity and manner of calcining the lead of the Sages before including it in the composition of the stone. After having calcined it, it must be vitrified to raise it to the supreme degree of purity, then it will be easy to convert it into oil which has the virtue of curing all the diseases that can attack man ; at the same time it has the power to raise all imperfect metals
to the level of gold and silver.

Gold is placed among imperfect metals, to make them participants in its light, in the same way as the Sun among the planets.

Basil Valentinus says that gold is a king surrounded by glory, and that he must marry the queen, who is the Moon or silver. After a certain time, this queen will give birth to a royal prince, infinitely more brilliant than his father and mother.

Philosophers assign to the Sun in the Zodiac, the fiery Crayfish, and the Lion of fire or dazzling gold color. These are the two signs dedicated to the Sun in the Zodiac.

The king, having the golden crown on his head, rises into the sky and fills all the space around him with light. He triumphs over all his enemies, and tramples underfoot the monster with three heads, which resemble those of a dog, a wolf and a lion. These heads adhere to a single body, the tail of which resembles a snake.

The dog's head represents mercury, that of the wolf denotes sulfur, & the lion's head indicates the strength of the salty spirit.

The head is the seat of the mind, and we could not assign it a more suitable one. See the first Key of Basil Valentin, & his third Chapter of the Occult Generation of the Planets, where he says that Jupiter is an igneous & sulphurous spirit; he explains his second Key by speaking of Latona,
who having slept with Jupiter, became pregnant & gave birth to two children, who were Apollo & Diana; but she was greatly tormented throughout her pregnancy by the Goddess Juno, who was so jealous of Jupiter
having slept with Latona that she sent the serpent Python to devour her.

To fully understand the meaning of the Author, you must know that this island was flooded, and that it was dried up by order of Jupiter.

Considering the fatigues of Latona, and the island dried up by order of Jupiter, it is easy to see that all this signifies the thirst endured by the fetus of the Stone of the Sages, which, like the island of Ortygia, has need the Sun's rays to dry out the humidity with which it is covered.

This is why it is necessary to educate oneself, and to learn thoroughly Hungarian Philosophy, and what the hunger that the King endures means, and the intention of the Author when he speaks of the lead of the Philosophers, of the vitriol from Hungary, & rock alum which he recommends to use preferentially to any other mineral.

We should also not ignore why the monster has three heads of different animals. It is easy to learn thoroughly about everything that concerns the dog, the wolf and the lion, by consulting Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Greek, Phoenician and Egyptian Fables, which are excellent treatises on Chemistry.

God has allowed no one to know the properties of antimony
spoken of in the Triumphal Chariot. This is why the vulgar ignoramus, who does not want to take the trouble to reflect on the effects that a cause can produce, has very often prepared this mineral rather for the destruction of the human race than for its conservation, because he is ignorant of the a real way of preparing it to obtain from it a salutary medicine & an incombustible elixir.

If we wanted to take the trouble to carefully examine all the phenomena that Hungarian antimony presents, when we reduce it to regula, as we said above, we would see that it is the true philosophical mirror in which we can find the explanation of all the fables of the Ancients.

If you are a little clever, you will see the star appear on the regula from the first preparation; but if you make a fire too violent, you will burn all the spirits, and dry up the mercurial humidity.

If you do not see the star, reduce the regula to powder, and melt it with the same amount of niter and tartar; repeat this operation until you see the star appear. Handle the material until the slag is red; but take care to protect yourself from the smoke, because it is venomous and causes etiosis.

Your regula will be prepared much more quickly and more perfectly,
if you use gravelly ashes, instead of niter and tartar.

The Hungarian antimony thus prepared contains a precious mercury; but this mercury is frozen; make the star disappear in due time, & you will have a mercury which externally resembles the mercury of the Philosophers, which is composed of spirit of sulfur & salt joined together, that is to say, a union of the principle & the end, of which it is easier to denote 'obtain potable gold, than mineral gold.

Basil Valentin, in his first Book of the Universal World, teaches the means of making this conjunction in a very short time. Dissolve, he says, the spirit of raw mercury with gentle heat, and the sulfur will be attracted as with a magnet; this sulfur is found in the earth, and the salt is drawn from the mercurial spirit, as with its natural magnet.

The regula contains a fixed acid and a volatile acid: they are enclosed in matter & developed by external fire & by the continual movement which brings together all beings in the same body to make them mature there.

What we have just said about the regula of martial antimony must be sufficient for enlightened people to be able to derive a real advantage from it; but you must read everything we have said about it, and not decide to carry out an operation after reading an article.

So put together everything we have said about the regula of martial antimony in the course of this little treatise, and you will be able to compose a sovereign remedy to cure diseases of the human body, and to purify imperfect metals.

Philosophers know two dragons which are of a different nature:
one has wings and flies to the summit of the highest mountains, the other has no wings and crawls on earth, in caves and in mining.

The winged dragon is mercury, and the one who has no wings is
philosophical sulfur. This is the Hercules that the Interpreters have called the salt of the Philosophers, which destroys all the impurities that it encounters in imperfect metals.

All metals & minerals contain an acid which prevents them from releasing the impurities with which they are surrounded in mining; this is why it is necessary to use alkalis to bring
natural heat to bodies which have no other illnesses than those caused by too much cold.

It is for this same reason that iron is added to antimony in the
making of the regula, which also contains niter and tartar which are detonated together.

Niter is converted into sulfur, and tartar into alkali which absorbs the acid; iron prevents mercury from flying away & at the same time delivers sulfur antimonial of its acid, & causes the mercury to precipitate to the bottom of the vase, where, as some chemists claim, it attracts the saline arsenical sulfur which is of the same species as the antimonial sulfur. This is what made Basil Valentin say that one poison drives out another.

Several philosophers, including Flamel, claim that the appearance of the star is caused by the addition of a large quantity of different salts; they base their reasoning on the fact that the union of a salt with a sulfur presents a strict form; but I think that this comes from the influx of
mercurial water or internal volatile alkaline salt combined with the pure & shiny earth which causes freezing, & I believe that it is to this freezing that we must attribute the appearance of the star, preferentially to anything else. At least this is what it seems that Basil Valentin wanted to indicate in his seventh Key.

The circulation of the sulfur of the Philosophers takes place internally in their
matter: this is why it exudes a sweet odor after calcination.

Chemists must strip philosophical mercury of its impure, corrosive sulfur, whose malignancy and the bad odor that it continually exhales, absorbs the sweet odor which would be felt without this obstacle, and it
is impossible to provide philosophical mercury with a penetrative virtue without this preparation.

I cannot refrain from adding here a few operations on the star regulus; I will present my observations in such a way that they can be seen as in a mirror; & I think that an intelligent man, and whom God will favor, will be able to easily discover the truth which is contained in the doctrine which I present.

It is necessary to know first of all, that the lead of the Sages is infested & soiled with an impure sulfur, from which it must be delivered by calcination in the reverberator furnace, or in a glassmaker's furnace, where it must be burned & reduced in ashes. If you can make our king die by fire, you will see him rise with a glorious body; then he will be as pure as the celestial spirits.

The doves that you will see appear after putrefaction, are generated by the volatile spirit, acid & alkali; they carry ambrosia to Jupiter, and keep watch continually to examine everything that happens in the king's palace.

The Philosophers' sieve is presented in the making of the regula; the slag
floats, and the mercury precipitates to the bottom of the crucible, provided that one takes care to strike a few blows on the sides of the vase with a stick.

The philosophical work comes to an end around the tenth month; for then; our king begins to open his eyes & breathe. This is the philosophical year.

The four seasons of the philosophical year are usually called hour, day, month, and solar year.

The lunar month of the Philosophers is made up of four weeks relative to the course of Venus in the sky.

The darkness lasts about forty days, at the end of which we see the light appear.

All our operations must be regulated; they only have one time, and there is only one job, as soon as the entrance to the king's palace is closed.

The regula must be composed on a full moon and in the appropriate season.

This is the way of the ancient Philosophers, by means of metallic spirits.

The Hercules of the Philosophers is a salt born from an acidic father and an alkaline mother.

The Pluto of the Philosophers is the philosophical land; their Neptune is the fixed alkali salt, and mercury or the volatile alkali salt; their Phoebus is the incombustible sulfur which resisted the fusion fire during the preparatory calcination.

It seems that Homer & Pytagore are the only ones who received knowledge of stone from the Egyptians.

Jason, son of Esone & Polymele, was the hero of Philosophy; the victories that this Prince was obliged to win to recover his kingdom, his travels to the mountains of Liburnia, which today we call Croatia; his navigation on the Adriatic Sea, his love affair with Creuse, daughter of the King of Corinth: all these adventures represent nothing other than the different operations of the hermetic magisterium; we can see the story of Jason in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where it is found in its entirety.

The interior parts of our stone are very pure, but we must separate the exterior parts, which are impure & heterogeneous.

The stone of the Sages is the daughter of fire; The philosophical land, which we call
Latona, contains gold and silver which can only come into being through fire.

The sweet odor that our material exudes in chemical operations is certain proof that it has reached the supreme degree of purity.

Our Panacea is the daughter of Aesculapius. Metal sulfurs contain an acid as does oak.

The refreshing broths of Jupiter are lightning & the volatile triple spirit.

Gold will never have any power over inferior metals until it has lost its solidity.

Gold & silver must be made volatile, to be able to penetrate the lower metals.

The form of the philosophical tincture, at the beginning of the operation, is similar to that of flowing mercury, and when the operation is finished, the material must be reduced to a gummy powder.

Quicksilver only acts on itself, and if we want it to have the virtue of acting on other lower bodies, we must animate it with an internal agent.

Quicksilver can dissolve metals when it has been prepared for this purpose,
and it increases in the dissolution after which it is passed through the chamois with the metals.

Philosophical mercury is composed only of a pure, metallic salt, and a sulfur mixed with metallic embryos.

Marcasite & antimony are bodies filled with metallic salts; we recognize this truth after we have dissolved it.

The igneous agent is in iron; & the resolving salt is in the lead of the Philosophers.

The salt and sulfur of the metals are found in the regula, the mixture of which makes the true mercury of the Philosophers.

It is necessary to carefully preserve the metallic embryos which are found in the sulfur of metals.

The medical virtue of metals consists of their sulfur, after it has been purged of its arsenical parts.

Philosophical mercury contains aqueous and terrestrial parts from which it must be delivered before conjoining with our gold. So dissolve our mercury in its spirit, filter the dissolution according to art, put it in a well-wrought matra, distil with a slow fire, & you will have the true philosophical mercury purged of all its heterogeneous parts; & without this purgation, it is impossible to derive the slightest advantage from it, because if we do not separate this rubbish, it will never combine with our gold. Without this conjunction, there will never be putrefaction, and without putrefaction, there will never be philosophical generation.

When we notice that the spirit is rising in the egg, and that it is not settling with the matter in the time when it should settle, we must reduce the fire for three or four days, at most. , you will see that the spirit will descend to the earth, and that it will settle there; then you will return the fire to the same degree where it was before, and you will leave it like this until the material has reached the perfect red.

Raimond Lulle says that he who does not convert our stone into oil does nothing. This oil from our stone reduces gold to its first material within thirty days, in a lukewarm bath.

Flamel says that when the stone reached red, for the first time, we must understand an ounce that we incorporate with eight ounces of philosophical mercury, in which we must have dissolved an ounce of vulgar gold, well calcined; this mixture of an ounce of perfect medicine, with eight ounces of philosophical mercury, and one ounce of gold is what Philosophers call their milk with which they nourish the philosophical child. Everything must be well ground in a glass mortar: we then put it in a well-battered matra, and cook it until it has reached the perfect red.

This is the food of the philosophical child, or the material prepared to multiply the stone to infinity.

Philosophers have never explained these later operations in such a clear, so intelligible manner; I hope that you will benefit from it, and that you will be grateful to me for having been less reserved than my predecessors. I have discovered to you all the most secret manipulations; I have described the matter enough for you to know it easily, and despite this, I long to provide you with greater insight; but I am forbidden to cross certain limits for the present.

Remember that you need a martial and antimonial sulfur to make the mercury of the Philosophers, and that you will never achieve the accomplishment of the magisterium, except by making a regula mixed with two substances, one sulfurous and one other arsenical.

Great obstacles are encountered in the separation of the antimony-martial regulus; but we must learn to overcome them by a resolutive method.

You must know how to convert the regula into mercury, which is precipitated to make the horizontal gold and sulfur of the philosophers, which must then be converted into a gummy and fixed powder, to give it a penetrative virtue.

This is the true and only way to enhance the dye, and to give it the strength to enter metallic bodies.

This powder can be precipitated to resolve it into common gold; but if we wanted to carry out this operation, a third of the powder would evaporate and be entirely lost; this is the feeling of Suichten & Combache, who cites this example in his second book of Properties of Antimony, where he says that gold and silver obtained from antimony can be converted into mercury, by the means of antimony quicksilver, which we cannot do with common gold and silver, because these supposedly perfect metals, taken from antimony, do not have all the fixity that we wants to attribute it to them; this is why it often happens, after a lot of work, that we only find gold after looking for the projection powder, using other metals.

The length and brevity of the operation depend on the preparation of the ferment; because if the gold is indeed volatilized,

The regula is easily converted into mercury, by means of the two Doves of Diana, which are contained in the first salt which destroys arsenical impurities, and brings out the mercury which has the virtue of dissolving all metals, and converting them into a mercury which coagulates easily
on digestion, provided that the arsenical sulfur is separated from it; by this means, one can strike philosophical gold; & this is what we call abbreviation in favor of the poor.

We have already spoken several times about the slag which floats during the making of the regula, and we still recommend taking great care of it; boil them in rainwater, which you will filter and evaporate
to extract a precious salt; after having thus leached this slag, you will calcine it in a crucible, adding a few pieces of common sulfur; they will become red like cinnabar; you will obtain from them a much more precious salt than the first, by boiling them with distilled vinegar, which you will filter and
evaporate.

Mix these two salts and incorporate them with sulfur of gold; cook everything in a crucible, and you will see something that will pleasantly surprise you.

The regula of martial antimony contains an oil which dissolves precious stones , such as emeralds, hematites, and others similar, from which a tincture is obtained which has admirable properties; & it is claimed that this oil is the true universal solvent which dissolves all bodies without boiling. Beuher gave an ample description of the properties of this solvent, the recipe of which is found in the works of several good Philosophers, who did not say everything they knew on this subject; because their recipe is far from complete.

Our regula is composed of two metals & two minerals, which are the only subjects of the magisterium. Basil Valentinus used the obscure expressions of Sendivogius, to indicate these matters; but it is easy to see that it does not leave the metallic kingdom; at the same time it indicates to the children
of art, a philosophical salt, which is the most suitable for the fermentation of metals, the most conformable to their nature, and which can tame them, dissolve them without altering them. This same salt at the same time gives metals a penetrative virtue, and strengthens their metallic tincture; but all these
operations are philosophical; & to make them, we must not use anything that is not of the same nature; because all those who introduce materials of a contrary nature will never succeed in making a multiplication fruitful.

There are only two sure ways to destroy metals and collect their internal souls, according to Géber. We purify, we kill, we resurrect metals with metals, & we spiritualize them. When stripped of all their earthliness, they become philosophical living gold & silver, to vivify imperfect metals, & renew & preserve the human body.

Here is some of the marvelous effects that can be achieved with this celestial & spiritual salt, by means of which from a vile, corporeal & earthly thing, we make a pure spirit which, by a magnetic virtue, attracts the spirit of the gold & silver to transmit it into other lower metallic bodies, to illuminate & transmute them.

A metallic body transmutes & illuminates its fellow man, or that which participates in its nature; the transmutation is done into gold or silver, depending on the specification of the stone, for white or for red.

Van Helmont assures that the steel contains the true mercurial humidity, and free from the corrosive, by means of which, on an open fire, and in an open crucible, the sulfurs of gold and silver can be fixed, by separating them from their bodies to convert them into volatile mercury, from which a dry philosophical tincture is made, to transmute all imperfect metals into gold & silver.

All good Artists know the quality of a metal by the color it gives off when it is in the fire, and they know how to regulate their operations accordingly.

Everything is generated in the bowels of the earth and elsewhere, by means of suitable heat. Metals, minerals, precious stones, come from a germ which is developed by means of proportionate heat, & they reach the degree of perfect maturity by the same cause.

The earth also metamorphoses in the same way, and is converted into limpid water, and this water becomes earth again, which, being cooked by a stronger fire, is converted into more or less pure metallic sulfur, according to its nature; the egg which hatches, and from which a chicken emerges by the heat of the brooding hen, presents us with an example which we must apply in suitable circumstances.

Fire is the basis & foundation of art. Make a porous, digestive & continuous fire; but be careful not to make it violent; it must be subtle, surrounding all matter; it must be enclosed, clear, airy, penetrating
& unique, so that it can heat without burning or altering. Examine carefully what I have just said; all the fire of the magisterium is unanimous.


hermetic: you must currently know the sacred lead of the Philosophers. This material which contains the germs of gold and silver, is the double azoth or the universal magnesia which receives its nourishment from Heaven and Earth; this is why the Philosophers say that it contains the spirit of God, which must be resolved into saline liquor, to give it the virtue of acting powerfully on all beings.

Everything that is necessary for the magisterium is contained in this material which appears in the form of a stone, and which is however not a stone: it rather has the form of a metallic body which contains a spiritual and celestial substance. , which has incomprehensible virtues.

Perfect health, long life & the inexhaustible treasures enjoyed by those who possess the stone, are nothing compared to the other graces & favors that God grants with this precious gift, which is the height of his mercy & infinite goodness.

This is what made Flamel say that he could not remember the happy moment when the Lord had filled him with so many graces and blessings, without throwing himself on his knees to thank him, praise him and bless him.

I have accompanied you during the course of the different seasons of the philosophical year, and we have now arrived towards the end of autumn, that is to say, at the end of the first operation of the triangular stone, which is in a virile age and close to maturity; at this time, she is close to her fixation on perfect red.

She no longer needs anything other than the rays of the Sun to be enlightened, enriched, and to acquire robust health, while awaiting from Heaven the virtue which is necessary to make you happy.

End of the second Volume.