PHILOSOPHICAL POEM ON THE AZOTH OF PHILOSOPHERS

By the sieur de Nuisement.

Extract from the Book Azoth by Basil Valentine

If Art could create the principles of things,
As he can accomplish the enclosed powers,
And created principles, & multiply them,
Nature at the feet of Art would come to humble itself,
Whereas in front of her he bends and bows,
Because if he has glory, it is the origin.
As master expert, & he as expert assistant.
She does her aprests(?), after which he serves her.

The next principles of which this great worker,
Composes metals the raw material,
And those whose elixir through art I must form.
For imperfect bodies the flaws reform,
Are in being, in substance, & uniform virtues,
Equal in quality; but different in shape.
Nature prepares them; & preparing them;
It makes our eyes look different.

In the center of the earth she keeps her shop,
Or of an admirable machine she assembles & manufactures,
From first principles these next principles;
Of which she will form with her expert hands,
A confused mass, or by weight it assembles,
The four qualities of two sperms together.

Having mingled the dry water with the stinking spirit,
Her furnace she inflames; & goes transmuting them,
In a smoky substance, or vapor which ceaselessly,
Ascends if some opposite obstacle does not lower it.

If nothing represses her by dint of stealing,
She escapes flees iue(?); & will form in the air
Some instrument of lightning: or the fateful aspect
Of a wandering comet, & meteoric fire.

But finding a rampart that she does not pierce,
It is reverberated, & curved downwards.
Then departing in a hurry, with the narrowest veins,
Rough rocks, & haughty mountains,
She is held there with mighty effort,
Of mineral virtue; uniting with her.
Of the very firm good of lasting union,
By the gentle action of amicable warmth;
Who day & night persists, in order to convert,
Metal, steam that can no longer be used.

Thus nature has for all fabrics,
This double vapor common to the Philosophers,
That it makes accomplished, as much as allows,
And the time, and the place, where the vapor sets in,
For if it encounters an impure womb,
The embryo that forms there is stained with its vice,
And if the miserly hand of the greedy merchant,
From the mother's womb goes the snatching child,
Before the first years destined to be theirs,
It is an abortifacient fruit, which dies before being born.

The clairvoyant Hermès with a Lynx eye opened,
The earth to the center; & subtle discovered
The deeper secrets where envious nature
Uses in hiding his industrious hand.

He wants her to marry Mercury with Venus,
Who in the beloved key, intertwined and bare:
Begot the child where their sexes come together,
Resembling both, who do not resemble him.

Venus feeling fat she explored fate,
Of his dear Embryo birth & death.
Three different Oracles afflicted her confused,
And none of them, however lying, deceives it.
The first portends him a submissive son of iron,
The other has a promised daughter for him,
Then the third announces to him a new brood,
Who being born daughter, & son, is neither male nor female:
And whose frail life in the air must expire,
These opposite destinies make Venus sigh,
Full of impatience; waiting for the day,
That the triple destiny will hatch from its fruit.

His birth according to divine omens,
For death make him believe in the words of the three soothsayers,
He is born male female, and is neither male nor female;
THE sword, the wave, and the air stole his soul,
Killed, drowned, hanged, in the April of his years;
Honored with the beautiful name of his divine parents.

The blind in such mystery will have this for fable,
Who's to unravel(?) true story.
For principles true by nature allied,
Are these divine lovers bound to the yoke of Himen:

And the double vapor that exhales from these two,
Taking from each his equal portion,
Is this Hermaphrodite; which are contained,
The two divine sperms of Mercury & Venus.

Art imitating Nature accomplishes the whole work,
By the same practice, and the same material,
In the belly of a clear vase, like a round globe,
The agent to the patient well purged uniting:
From which the fire gives birth to a subtle vapour,
Who many times rises, & many times distills;
Deanimating the bodies that will produce it,
Then with the own soul in them shrinking.

It's Azoth, it's the spirit, it's the fugitive soul,
Which invisible smoke swirling arrives,
Qu top of our globe; or losing strength & heart,
Visibly falls back into a pearly liquor:
And not quick, common, cold, and damp silver,
Even though it appears radiant & fluid:
Have a Mercury extracted from subtilized bodies,
By vulgar quicksilver open & untied:
Spirit which may be called Mercury of Mercury;
More subtle, warm & dead(?), than that of nature.

By this spirit visible in glorified Heaven,
Our filthy Brass is all purified,
That it becomes medicine infinite in power;
To exterminate everything, which offends every body.

Who has seen this Azoth has seen our Elixir;
Because of our Elixir our Azoth issir(?):
Since Elixir is nothing but Mercurial water;
And let Azoth be called the steam that comes out of it.
Elixir is the body in reduced Mercury;
And the Azoth is the spirit which of the two is produced:
Everything is made water, by water; but this water that nothing wets,
Otherwise joins his own remains.

Now we can divide this great work into three parts,
And under three different names the secret to disguise,
Rebis is the first, when the stone is composed:
And which the two spouses only do one thing.
Elixir the second, when in our coffin,
Floats a sea of silver under veils of mourning.
Azoth is the third, while in the void(?)
From the diaphanous globe, a lucid vapor
Out of its waves rises, & fertilizing above:
Then rechet(?) when the force has gone to default.

Spirit that ravishes the soul, and hides it in its bosom,
When rotten bodies his tincture he tears.
Tincture, oil, soul, sulphur, extracted by our agent:
Living water that shines, and rolls as clear as silver,
Beneath the dazzling, humid & inconstant species
From the purified spirit of this floating sea.
As after the earth will have its water resumed,
The soul, & the spirit will be below the bodies understood:
Body, & earth where gold must die & rot,
Like the human sperm in the human womb.

We see the plants produced by the earth,
By putrefaction being in the ground reduced:
Earth which by virtue of the first surpasses,
By its salt which animates it, and which makes it fatter.

Those who plowing practiced the train,
The chaff was taken care of as well as the grain:
For rotten straw into fat converted,
Rejoins the earth, & gives it life:
Whose after his own grain, in such a sown field,
Is more abundantly produced & animated.
The metals, from Mercury, drew their seed:
He is their own land & he alone in power
To reduce them in him by putrefaction,
To give the perfect more perfection.
For our bodies submerged in the waves of Mercury
And transmuted into him by his own decay:
Are the fertile earth, and the fruitful fields,
Or our beautiful sown seeds become more virtuous.