Secret Preparation of Mary the Prophetess

Take four pounds of common salt or sea salt. Calcine it until perfect whiteness,
then put it in a glass vase and expose it to the air in the moonlight in fine and
serene weather, this from the first quarter before the beginning of the equinox.

This first magnet will attract from the bosom of the air the influences of the stars which it will reduce to water without dissolving it.

Filter and distill over a fire of sand or ashes in a well-luted retort. Separate the water from the attractive salt which appears as Mercury in the bottom of the retort and which will now serve without diminishing its virtue or its qualities.

Strain the water from the container into a retort well held in a bain-marie until there is very little water left in the retort. You must repeat this three times leaving a little material at the bottom each time. times.

Then take your water for the last time, and put it in another retort in the Bain-Marie, until it has all passed and repeat as many times as it leaves no more stains or marks in the retort.

Then put this water forty days in putrefaction in manure or in a bain-marie to
separate the spirit from its aqueous phlegm and distill over low heat,

Take the spirit, put it in a vessel of meet well lute, hang it with three threads,
over an ash fire for four months or until it is all thickened and becomes salt or earth and keep some of it.

Place it in a bain-marie without lutering the vessel where you will add the other part of your salt or earth.

Dissolve the whole, then suspend the vessel by three threads as before above a
lamp fire, and everything will be reconverted into salt or earth at the end of two months.

Replace it in a bain-marie, a third time, freeze as above over a lamp fire and you
will complete these three dissolutions and freezings, the philosophical mercury will be completed. Take then a pound of this mercury, earth salt and sulfur
of nature (the quantity differs according to philosophers), add it to five or six pounds of this pure spirit, this heap that you have kept, you will put it in
putrefaction for fifteen days.

Then you will pass the putrefied matter in a water bath in a retort to draw from it by the fire, the sulfur and the salt of nature, and if they did not immediately pass through the beak of the retort, you will reiterate the heat, distillation and
putrefaction until the all is passed away, united with the spirit.

So you put the material in a water bath for fifteen or twenty days and it has the power to dissolve all metallic bodies. But we must not stop at this first simple water of the Philosophers, for that we must also prepare the second:

Take an ounce of Moon from a cup in lime and two ounces of gold also in very fine lime. Put each one apart in a vessel of glass, pour on them the aforesaid water, and that it floats four fingers, carry them to the bath of sand or ashes and make dissolve. Heat them well, then place them separately in a well-stoppered vessel. If they refuse to dissolve, pour fresh water until they are completely dissolved.

Then take your solutions of gold and moon, distill separately in a light bain-marie and the bodies will remain fixed at the bottom of their retorts and the waters will pass.

Recover your distilled waters and put separately with them, as much as was done
previously, of sulphur, salt or earth.

Then hang up your two vessels and allow their contents to dry for two days in a water bath, and until finally the said sulfur or earth is dissolved.

You will return in oil each metal which will have been at the bottom of the first retorts, similarly, impregnate the water with sulphur, salt or earth which you will have withdrawn from the solution, which water you will distill and digest in a water bath for eight days.

Remove these waters from the bain marie again, each one separately and keep separately using the salt that you will mortify in the air until it is two fingers high, distill it with ashes over a low heat, when the waters have passed , increase the fire a degree or two to pass the white smoke of the sages, then the metallic spirit of the two luminaries will pass into water by the animating virtue of the salt of nature which will carry it with it.

Leave the vessels to cool then on the half of the Matter which will remain at the bottom, put the said spirit back which you will put in a bain-marie to cook a night and then distill to the ashes as before, until you have removed all the juice, spirit or mercury from the two great luminaries, which will be done at the tenth or
fourteenth time;

Then join the two metallic juices, pass them together through the mouthpiece of the retort, and if there is anything left, dirt, or faeces or matter at the bottom of the retort, repeat and cohobe until nothing remains. nothing.

Then take two large connected glass vessels in which you will put your mercury menstruation.

Then lute the two connected vessels, let everything dry And then steam the boiling bain-marie without touching the water and leaving it for three or four days, after which time your philosophical mercury will be accomplished and will be all powerful and fragrant.

This universal solvent or menstruation in this state is the Triple Mercury of the Philosophers, which must be put in the philosophical egg and cooked over a
slow fire.

All colors will fade. The last will be red as blood. A weight will go over a thousand and more.

If you project said material on a thousand and more molten gold; when it is cold, it will break itself into powder, which will have a weight of one hundred
mercury and more, and on the unrefined moon.

End of the work of Mary the Prophetess