THE KEYS TO SPAGYRIC PHILOSOPHY

M. LEBRETON

The text has been modernized from the text of 1722. Marc-Gérald CIBARD.



THE
KEYS
TO SPAGYRIC
PHILOSOPHY WHICH GIVE Knowledge of the Principles & true Operations of this Art in the Mixes of the three genders,

By the late M. LEBRETON Doctor of the Paris Faculty in PARIS. rue Saint Jacques Chez CLAUDE Gombert,

at the corner of rue des Mathurins, at L'Image Notre-Dame.

Mr. DCCXXII.

With the approval & Privilege of the King.

SUMMARY

FIRST SECTION: Calcination 4
CHAPTER FIRST 4
Calcination in general 4
CHAPTER II 8
Calcination of Vegetables. 8
CHAPTER III 12
Of the Calcination of Animals. 12
SECOND SECTION: On Putrefaction. 14
CHAPTER ONE 14
Of Putrefaction in general. 14
CHAPTER II 16
Of the Putrefaction of Plants 16
CHAPTER III 18
Of the Putrefaction of Animals 18
THIRD SECTION: Of the Solution. 20
CHAPTER ONE 20
Of the Solution in general. 20
CHAPTER II 21
Of the Plant Solution. 21
CHAPTER III 23
FOURTH SECTION: Distillation. 26
CHAPTER ONE 26
Distillation in general. 26
CHAPTER II 31
Of the Distillation of the Vegetable. 31
CHAPTER III 34
Of the Distillation of the Animal. 34
FIFTH SECTION: Sublimation. 36
CHAPTER ONE 36
Of Sublimation in general. 36
CHAPTER II 38
Of the Sublimation of Plants. 38
CHAPTER III 41
Of the Sublimation of Animals. 41
SIXTH SECTION: Of the Union. 46
CHAPTER ONE 46
Of the Union in general. 46
CHAPTER II 51
Of the Union of Plants. 51
CHAPTER III 53
Of the Union of Animals. 53
SEVENTH SECTION: Coagulation. 61
CHAPTER FIRST 61
Of Coagulation in general. 61
CHAPTER II 64
On the Coagulation of the Plant Elixir. 64
CHAPTER III 68
Of the Coagulation of the Animal Elixir. 68
SECOND PART: Of the Mineral Elixir 74
CHAPTER FIRST 74
Of the Calcination of Minerals. 74
CHAPTER II 82
Of the Putrefaction of Minerals. 82
CHAPTER III 88
Of the Solution of Minerals. 88
CHAPTER IV 98
Of the Distillation of Minerals. 98
CHAPTER V 103
Of the Sublimation of Minerals. 103
CHAPTER VI 108
Of the Union of Minerals. 108
CHAPTER VII 115
Of the Coagulation of Minerals. 115
CHAPTER VIII 119

THE KEYS
TO SPAGYRIC
PHILOSOPHY FIRST SECTION:

Calcination FIRST CHAPTER Calcination in general Aphorism I. True Chemyry, Spagyria or Alchemy, separates the pure substance of each mixture from all that it has of unclean or foreign. II The Type or model of this sublime art is none other than nature itself, which for the conservation of the individuals it specifies, incessantly separates heterogeneous substances: All these efforts in each being end at this end . III

Art, more powerful than nature, by the same ways that nature marks it, frees more perfectly the natural virtues of the body from everything that obstructed them; it amplifies their sphere of activity, & brings together the principles which vivify them. Such are the views of Chemistry: the example of nature, which seems to exercise this art in the work of nutrition, as we see by the grossness that it rejects which were contained in foods & by the superfluities of all the digestions, from which it discharges through the corridors intended for this purpose.
IV

The operations of nature differ only in terms from the operations of Spagyria. These are 1o Calcination, 2o Putrefaction, 3o Solution, 4o Distillation, 5o Sublimation, 6o Union, 7o Coagulation or fixation.
V

To calcine is to reduce a mixture by fire to lime or ashes, which cannot be burned further.
VI

There are two pure substances in the ashes, one terrestrial, the other igneous; the first is converted into glass by the violence of the fire, the latter dissipates in the air.
VII

The mixture before Calcination had an aerial substance, in the consistency of oil or oily water, which can be fixed to the test of any fire.
VIII

The igneous substance, which is the principle of multiplication, extension & generation of the species, can only be separated by the greatest fire.
IX

This fixed igneous substance of nature is the innate seed of the mixed, which Philosophers call the natural Star of each body, which always tends of itself to generation; but which can only act as long as it is excited by celestial heat.
X

This celestial fire is universal, it is everywhere; this is the main cause of the stone, so vaunted by Philosophers. This is why they said that their stone is found everywhere, and that it is created by nature without the help of art.
XI

All the particles of fixed salt of each mixture enjoy a few sparks of this fire, and it is contained as in its natural body; but unable to act without being excited.
XII

There is a volatile celestial fire which has the power to excite the fire hidden in the earth; it is drawn by the distillation of a land that the Philosophers know, what they call the Mother of their stone.
XIII

This very fire, after it is extracted from the earth, leads the earth to the perfection of stone, and it is called the father of stone.
XIV

The stone is the strongest of all substances composed of the elements, it is the oldest assuming old age to strength; it is the most perfect in attributing perfection to old age. The other mixed people are weaker, younger, and less perfect.
XV

Elemental bodies are all the weaker or stronger the more or less they contain celestial fire; the degrees of its quantity relate to those of their power. It is the sky of each body, and the spring of their sphere.
XVI

The long duration of the mixed depends on the strong union of the celestial spirit, with the radical humid. Death, or the corruption of the mixed, is the solution of this negg by the power of an opposite & superior magnetism. Generation is the union of a new spirit which has made itself dependent on victorious magnetism and increases its energy.
XVII

The strength of this union is destroyed by internal heat or the impatient action of the same spirit, or by external and foreign humidity, to which the energy of the mixed could not resist, however strong it is suffocated by it. .
XVIII

Because this union is stronger in some bodies and weaker in others, they also last more or less.
XIX

When the union of a spirit is broken, the humid radical immediately receives, and conceives, so to speak, another spirit which first expels thus the corruption of one thing is the generation of another.
XX

Nature always tends to produce from a specific seed, an individual similar to that from which the seed came; but it often happens that it is diverted, and that it produces a different species, in proportion as this seed has lost its first state, and has degenerated from its nature, by the impression and the corrupting power of external agents. . Thus the wheat degenerates into tares, thus imperfect animals and monsters are generated.
XXI

When external agents agree with internal nature, like always arises from like; thus bees produce bee ashes.
XXII

The only fixed spirit is the cause of life & author of generation: the volatile is of no use if it is not made fixed.


The volatile mind repairs & augments the fixed mind, as much as it converts itself into the nature of the fixed. Thus the juice of food, and the spirit of the air that the lungs attract, maintain the life of animals.
XXIV

The union of the spirit with the humid radical is all the stronger as the mixture is freer from excremental impurities; it is, say the Philosophers, heaven and earth conjoined and united; it is the brother & the sister, the husband & the wife who embrace each other very closely.
XXV

What can free the mixture from its impurities is the abundance and strength of its spirit. This is why certain stones are more solid and last longer than others. This is also why plants and animals have more or less strength and vigor.
XXVI

Plants renew themselves in Spring; because the Sun opens their pores and influences new spirits which penetrate and vivify them.
XXVII

The secret that Chemistry offers to prolong life is made of a very pure fixed salt with the very pure volatile, in which the fixed spirit and the volatile are hidden.
XXVIII

The general practice of this arcana consists of separating, purifying, & fixing the spirits of the mixed. The secret of the Philosophers can be drawn from any elemental body, and its virtues are admirable.
XXIX

Fixed vegetable salt placed in the ground soon reproduces the plant from which it is taken, because it attracts air, water, and earth, spirits of its nature which it determines to its magnetism .

---

On the Calcination of Plants.

Aphorism I

The first Calcination, which is only imperfect, separates all the volatile from the fixed; but when both are purified, everything is fixed by the last calcination, which is the perfect one.
II

There are individuals who need a greater fire for imperfect calcination than others.
III

The method for the extraction of radical humidity consists of the separation of the two spirits, fixed & volatile, their purgation & reduction.
IV

The particular method on plants is digestion, the distillation of fiery water, of aqueous humidity, of an oil by degrees of fire, the purification of the spirit & of the oil, the extraction & the purging of the fixed salt, the fixation of the volatile on the fixed, the multiplication.
V

The virtue of the fixed salt is increased by the coagulation of the volatile, & this operation makes the volatile constant & permanent in its action.
VI

Imperfect Calcination is of two kinds, one is gentle, and is done with digestion, the other is violent and without digestion.
VII

The volatile spirit can only be useful for the restoration of plants when it is fixed.
VIII

The imperfect Calcination is necessarily required before the perfect, because it purifies both spirits.
IX

Both Calcinations are violent to excrement: but neither is violent to the pure substance of the mixture; because the sperm of the elements & the form of the mixed are not destroyed by them, and on the contrary they become more perfect.
X

The sperm of the elements which is very general matter, is common to all mixed things and indifferent to any form; but spirits of different nature determine it to different kinds of mixtures.
XI

This very general matter is incorruptible, the particular or determined is corruptible. Both are separable from the radical humidity by the violence of fire.


The particular sperm only flies away by vitrifying Calcination.
XIII

This sperm is the very proximate subject & matter, which immediately receives the essential form, & the contact of these two principles makes an inseparable union.
XIV

The corruption of the particular sperm is nothing other than the expulsion of the spirits which had determined the general matter to the qualities of being of the first compound, & this expulsion is produced by the ingest of other spirits, which determine this sperm to the qualities of being of this or that other mixed.
XV

Chemical Calcination does not destroy the ashes, nor does it vitrify them; but on the contrary it purifies the particular sperm & makes it more perfect.
XVI

The very general sperm is made particular by certain particular volatile spirits, & this matrix can be stripped of these spirits, & be determined to another kind of mixture by other particular and volatile spirits of another kind.
XVII

Thus one spirit expels the other, disposes the matter into another form, and produces in it this form of a new compound. This is the source of the successions of figures in matter; such is the order of generations and the corruptions that occur there.
XVIII

The ignorant find themselves frustrated in their hopes by the dissipation of the specific spirits of the materials they work; which happens by the violence of the fire which chases away the specific sperm with the spirits, or from the corruption of this same sperm by the mixture of other external & foreign agents, stronger than those of the particular mixture.
XIX

Particular or determined sperm is of two kinds; namely, the visible & the invisible: The visible sperm contains in itself the form of the particular mixture, & always produces a mixture of the same nature.
XX

The invisible sperm does not contain the form of the mixed, but it is indifferent & indeterminate to any kind of mixed. It is the food of the visible sperm, it is made particular by the action of the latter.


The invisible is volatile and the visible is fixed.
XXII

The invisible sperm does not receive determination only from the visible sperm which fixes it; but also other external agents which often produce, through the assistance of their magnetism, imperfect forms, thus imperfect animals are generated.
XXIII

Imperfect animals are thus called by the defect of the organs or members which we see in the perfect ones; because we notice these monsters which only have the organs necessary for life.
XXIV

General and indeterminate agents cannot conform to the specific nature of the particular sperm; because the species of their magnetism is different.
XXIV

The common cause does not produce the like of the like compound in the sperm of the like. Thus the animal does not produce an animal of its species, without the sperm of its species.
XXVI

The uninterrupted action of the sperm produces the perfect organs in the multiplied species.
XXVII

The sperm is the body in which the semen is hidden: it is nourished there with the food that its body prepares for it, all the time that its body lasts and subsists.
XXVIII

The seed remains, although its body is corrupted, and then it feeds on foods of a dissimilar nature, this is what causes it to degenerate, and produces a mixture unlike the first.
XXIX

Thus when the visible sperm is separated from the living body, or when it is corrupted by external agents the production of a similar mixture is necessarily lacking.
XXX

When the sperm or the body of the seed is corrupted, it is changed into another body, and the seed likewise into another seed; which produces a different generation. Thus tares beget wheat.
XXXI

Thus to generate like from like, it is necessary to preserve the sperm without any corruption, as we see that the grain of wheat is preserved, and remains without alteration of its species attached to the root of its stem.
XXXII

The grain of wheat when it rejects is not corrupted in its substance; but only altered, and by this alteration the seed is digested, and disposed to the generation of wheat.
XXXIII

The mysteries of the Philosophers on plants produce admirable effects, as we see by the examples of Palingenesis on roses, & here & by the arcana of the food which preserves life and chases away all disease.

CHAPTER III
Of the Calcination of Animals.

Aphorism I

In Calcination the vital form, whether of the animal or the plant cannot be preserved.
II

The Chemist does not seek form, but only the subject or matter which contains the form, & which is preserved with the power to receive other forms.


This matter is none other than the radical humidity with its fire or its natural heat, which is the last nourishment of all the parts of the mixture; material close to the semen & sperm, & the average substance composed of all the elements.
IV

The practice of Spagyrists on blood consists of the separation of a substance similar to milk, of a volatile salt, of a red oil, of a fixed salt; in the purification of all these substances, & in their union, & fixation.
V

The animal secret is represented by a circle made of two serpents, one winged, the other wingless; which signify the two spirits, fixed & volatile, united together.
VI

The volatile spirit is the spirit of the world: it is green in its own nature; nonetheless father of all colors, & the food of the fixed mind.
VII

The volatile spirit crud is venom; but when cooked it is a theriac against all illness.
VIII

Each secret leads to perfection the mixed ones of its reign, and not the others.

---

SECOND SECTION: On Putrefaction.

CHAPTER ONE
Of Putrefaction in general.

Aphorism I

Putrefaction is the purgation of the radical humidity by the natural and spontaneous fermentation of pure and homogeneous principles, with the impure and heterogeneous, with the help of natural & innate fires, or of an external and unnatural heat.
II

Fixed pure earth is crystalline & easy to resolve into liquor.
III

The impurity of the earth consists of two earths; one is black & the other white.
IV

Both soil prevents the two roots from immediately touching each other, and from uniting perfectly.
V

The purification of the mixed cannot be done without death or putrefaction.
VI

The principles according to Aristotle must be simple, & according to the Spagyrists, they must be pure and sensitive, that is to say freed from their crust & heterogeneity.
VII

Any mixed body is immediately composed of wet and dry.
VIII

Every mixed body is reduced to dust, without continuity, as it loses its radical humidity.
IX

In the wet & the dry are contained salt, sulfur, & mercury, as well as the four elements.
X

In these three principles the qualities of the four elements dominate differently: in salt frigidity & dryness; in Mercury frigidity & humidity; & in sulfur heat and dryness.
XI

This domination of qualities is easy to discover by the senses outside the three principles: but inside all three are hot & dry.
XII

The principles cannot separate without putrefaction.
XIII

Putrefaction is the principle of generation of mixed like: which does not mean the intimate putrefaction of the principles, & of the proper substance of the compound: but of that which produces the solution of the external sperm which bound & embarrassed the principles; not of the entire putrefaction but of the average only.
XIV

That if the mixture were corrupted in the intimate substance, it could not generate a similar mixture.
XV

The various species of mixed degenerate reciprocally one into the other, like wheat into tares, tares into wheat: which happens through the action of celestial spirits.
XVI

The internal spirit preserves the mixed; & this spirit is often chased from its seat by another external spirit more powerful than it.


No mixed person can reach the ultimate perfection without accidental death.
XVIII

When the composite has arrived at its entire perfection, it no longer has any movement in itself, and the parts which compose it are in their most perfect rest: But then the spirits of its magnetism, free from any obstacle, are in their liveliest action, and suffer no interruption of their movement.

CHAPTER II
On the Putrefaction of Plants

Aphorism I

Complete or substantial putrefaction is the extinction of the mixed form.
II

The main cause of this absolute death is none other than the heterogeneity and discordance of the elements.
III

The elements which constitute the food of the mixed are not always equally pure, the nature of the mixed confusedly attracts the pure and the impure that its food provides it.
IV

The spirit of the world which is internal to the mixed resides immediately in the pure elements, where by the force of the particular magnetism which it exercises there, it constantly repels the impure, and if it cannot drive them out, it subjects them to itself. , & suppresses their energy: but if he himself becomes inferior in power, he yields to the effort of his adversaries, he escapes, & the mixed perishes.
V

The pure and the impure fight each other through the opposition of their qualities, which, through the continuation of the combat, diminishes little by little.
VI

In natural putrefaction, the pure is released from its excrement, more or less depending on the condition of the place where the putrefaction takes place.
VII

Putrefaction which occurs by nature alone and without the aid of art, never purifies perfectly, because the open air in which it occurs is a powerful obstacle. But the artificial putrefaction which takes place in closed vessels purifies to perfection.
VIII

Artificial purification is done by calcinations, lotions, & distillations.
IX

Calcination, separation, & putrefaction are always found together, whether it is the work of nature alone, or the operation of art.
X

We separate from the wine after putrefaction various humidities, three of which are the body, the spirit and the soul of the wine; the fourth is useless phlegm.
XI

Alchemy kills the mixed & then brings it back to life.
XII

In this change from death to life, all the essential parts are perfected; & the excrements alone are separated: thus the substances specific to and determined by the specific being of the mixed embrace and bond more intimately. Thus their magnetism is all the more powerful & more active, as the spirit of the world which passes through the pores of these elemental substances, radiates there with less obstacle; & therefore with more speed: This new activity can rightly be called, new life or resurrection of the mixed.
XIII

While the sensible form of the mixture is altered, although the first elemental parts are not at the same time by the operations of art, it seems that the mixture is dead; but it is not truly so, because the particular forms which reside in the first elementations are not destroyed, and all the specific magnetisms which result from them can still reunite, after the separation of the parts dissimilar to their nature, and contribute all together with more power to a universal form & more perfect than the first.

CHAPTER III
On the Putrefaction of Animals

Aphorism I

Hyle is nothing other than magnetism which results from the composition and mixture of first elements, and it is the material principle of which all forms are composed, but we except reasonable souls.
II

It is even believed that the rational soul is only attached to the organized body by means of this Hyle.
III

Nature cannot unite the extremes together without first altering them; but God can, and thus the reasonable soul receives no alteration.
IV

There are three natures in each mixture; & it is the same in the great world where these three natures meet.
V

In all mixed spirit, soul, and body are only one thing in nature,
VI

Excrement is no less composed of elements than pure substance; but their composition is different, & their magnetism dissimilar, on which depends their heterogeneity, & the reciprocal discordance of pure substance with them.
VII

The strength of the duration of the mixture consists in its purity, & depends on the separation of the excrement.
VIII

The separation of excrement is done for animals as well as for other mixed animals.
IX

Among the three parts of the humid radical, the most subtle and the quickest to ignite is called soul.
X

This soul is not the last perfection of the organic body or the specific magnetism which gives it life: but only the main material part which specifies & maintains this perfection, & this vivifying soul of the organized machine.
XI

The entire hyle of the mixed, or the subject of specific magnetism is the focus of the vital.
XII

The vegetative soul and sensitive soul are produced from this hyle; but not the rational soul: thus the rational soul is immortal, as the Pagans themselves believed.

---

SECTION THREE: The Solution.

CHAPTER ONE
Of the Solution in general.

Aphorism I

The solution is the conversion of the fixed radical humid into an aqueous body.
II

The cause which produces this solution is the volatile spirit which is hidden in the first water.
III

When this water has made the perfect solution of the fixed, it is called fountain of life, nature, diana, naked & free.
IV

Nature, which is the principle of all movements & action in the mixed, is immediately hidden in the fixed salt alone.
V

It is dissolved to release it from its gross thickness, and by this means make it capable of penetration.
VI

Water is the bond of the volatile spirit.
VII

Superfluous water is rejected by the distillations, and only as much is retained as is necessary to restore the spirit to the earth.
VIII

By this solution the pure salt which can be dissolved is separated from an impure earth which cannot be dissolved by water.
IX

After this solution, the two roots are brought up through distillation together in the form of heavy water.
X

Heavy water is a medium substance, in which the tinctures body & soul, body & spirit, the two roots of the Philosophers' stone are united together.
XI

After the distillation of the heavy water follows sublimation, by a new conjunction of this pure heavy water with the pure fixed salt.

CHAPTER II
Of the Plant Solution.

Aphorism I

The fixed substance that must be dissolved is hidden in the ashes, and the volatile that makes the solution is hidden in the water.
II

The generative virtue is hidden in the fixed substance, of which food is the volatile substance.
III

The volatile spirit, making the solution of the fixed by its abundance, separates at the same time the heterogeneous.
IV

Each mixture contains three substances, namely, the body, the mind & the soul.
V

The spirit or volatile substance takes its origin from the first constitutive nature of all mixed things; & this spirit is of three kinds of genera, by a different domination of elements in each of the three kingdoms.
VI

The volatile spirit is the subtlest part of the fixed salt & resides in the fiery water.
VII

The water that we call fiery or burning is such in fact, and takes flame if it is from the vegetable or animal kingdom; but not that of the mineral kingdom. At least these mineral waters rarely catch fire, although they are also called fiery waters, because they are similar to the others in the composition of their substance.
VIII

The fiery water of Tin and that of lead catch flame, not those of the others.
IX

The true chemical solution is made by the spirit of salt dissolved in water alone, and not otherwise.
X

The fixed salt is the cause of coagulation, and the volatile is the cause of the solution, because the heat of the fixed salt is accompanied by dryness, and that of the volatile is humid.
XI

There is nothing in the world capable of making the solution unless it contains in itself the spirit of salt, dissolved by humidity, or the volatile spirit.
XII

Dew, the spirit of wine, strong waters, vinegar, make a solution because they contain the volatile spirit of salt, which is the spirit of fixed dissolved salt.
XIII

The spirit of dissolved salt is endowed with a dissolving celestial virtue, because it is subtle and of the same substance as the fixed salt of each body.
XIV

The volatile spirit is found not only in hot liquors; but also in cold ones, such as vinegar, verjuice, lemon juice, etc.
XV

In hot liquors the volatile spirit is susceptible to flame, because it consists of the aerial & igneous part of the salt.
XVI

In cold liquors it is not capable of igniting, because it consists of the terrestrial and aqueous part of the salt.
XVII

The solution of plants is achieved by the union of the fixed & the volatile, & by the continuation of a very slow external heat.
XVIII

The two roots joined together become water by this solution; & this water is the last food, & the second substance of plants.

From the Animal Solution.

Aphorism I

The two roots or sperm of the elements, which are the fixed and the volatile, are like boxes in which the spirits of each kingdom are locked.
II

In the spagyric process on the animal, these two sperm must be separated, purged, & reunited together.
III

But in this work it is not possible to preserve the most subtle part of the living animal, which contained the most animal spirit.
IV
The natural substance of animals loses even this more subtle part, as soon as it is separated from the living body.
V

A similar animal cannot be born from the dead body, nor from the semen separated from the animal; & that,
VI

The animal spirit is so subtle that it cannot be perceived by the senses, although it is the cause of all the movements of animals, and the subject of the sensitive soul.
VII

The animal solution is made of the two minds together, the fixed and the volatile, as with other mixed ones.
VIII

The separation of the spirits having been made, the individual form perishes, and the same form no longer returns when the same spirits are reunited.
IX

But a better form follows, when the body is purified & the spirit multiplied.
X

In all living bodies, both sensitive and vegetal, the Artist does not seek form, but only the pure body; that is to say, the humid radical.
XI

The humid radical is the immediate subject of all forms, diverse in the essence of each, indifferent to all, and composed of two integral parts, one fixed and the other volatile.
XII

These parts come from the assortment of elements; they are first in composition & last in resolution, & of the same essence between them.
XIII

On these parts depend all the virtues of the mixed; and of all the other things that are mixed with it, it only holds the hindrance of its virtues.
XIV

In animal work it is necessary to dephlegmate matter exactly, so that no spirit rises with the water; because it would always remain dissolved and inseparable from water.
XV

The dephlegmation being completed, the spirit then rises in dry form; then by such a dry solution it dissolves the earth.
XVI

If this volatile animal spirit is the humid one, it must be coobed often on the fixed and always dephlegrated, as long as it is very dry.
XVII

The only aerial humidity is that which dissolves its terrestrial humidity, and converts it into air.
XVIII

The practice of animal work on the flesh of animals is to carry out digestion, dephlegmation, a triple infusion of new blood, the sublimation of a flower of very pure salt, the extraction of fixed salt, the purification of the two salts; the sublimation of the fixed salt by its volatile salt.

---

FOURTH SECTION: Distillation.

FIRST CHAPTER
Distillation in general.

Aphorism I

Distillation is the ascent or descent of the humid radical to purify it.
II

Nature purifies the exhalations of the earth by frequent distillation; then it unites the pure volatile with the pure fixed, and by this path generates all the mixed ones.
III

The vapors which exhale from the earth, from all the liquors drawn from plants, or which transpire from all animate bodies, rising into the air under the wings of the spirits which they contain; they merge in the air itself; then come together with each other by the equality of their magnetism, and soon fall again in rain or dew.
IV

Meteors are only generated from a subtle matter that boiling and decoction forcefully push and drive out of the fixed matter.
V

Meteors cannot be pure elements, since they ignite and destroy themselves.
VI

Nothing can destroy itself, while it is powerful & stable in its own being; & nothing is more powerful in its nature in this universe than a pure element.
VII

What is converted into meteors is nothing other than the spirituous part of the humid radical of all the mixed ones, which cannot tolerate boiling, nor withstand the shock of particles of an opposite magnetism.
VIII

All the substance of the radical humidity does not dissipate otherwise the generations of the mixed ones would cease.
IX

As spiritual matter is different according to the various dominations of the elements; thus the meteors are different by the differences of this same material.
X

Igneous meteors contain fire or sulfur, a more or less dominant principle.
XI

If this sulfur principle does not dominate in a higher degree, the specific magnetism of these particles reduces them to a glutinous substance, which soon, by the evaporation of the superfluous humidity, becomes susceptible to flame.
XII

The flame lasts more or less long in igneous meteors depending on the subtlety or density of the material, and as we notice with oils, water, sulfur, nitres, and other similar things.
XIII

Aerial meteors contain the more or less dominant air.
XIV

This air excited by the magnetism of other principles comes violently out of the matter which contains it, powerfully pushes our common air, which produces the winds; then converts into water, falls back onto the earth, revives the magnetism of overly dry plants, cooks and becomes intimate with the fixed spirit; & gives growth to vegetations, & perfection to the generations begun.
XV

After the igneous meteors, great winds come from the violent shock that the air receives from volatile spirits. Epidemic diseases also often occur through corrupted exhalations, with which the air is filled, which introduce into the liquids of animals magnetisms or movements opposed to those which maintain their fluidity and balance, with the solid parts of the machine. .
XVI

The spirituous substance which rises from the center of the earth, collides with the molecules of the water it encounters, and thus causes storms on the sea by the different refractions it suffers there; just as it produces winds by the shock of the air.
XVII

This spirituous substance dominates according to the increase it receives in the phases of the Moon, whose whirlwind, in relation to the earth and their reciprocal illuminations, is sometimes more and sometimes less lively, more or less capable of interrupting and repelling the faults of this spirit which creates the magnetism of the earth, and which rolls it in the vast sea of ​​rarefied waters which support it.
XVIII

Thus the humid radical of the mixed is accustomed to following the Moon. It is more abundant when it pushes back with more force the central spirit of the earth, and when it finds less outlet towards the lunar sphere.
XIX

The ebb and flow of the sea follows these aspects, which are called the quarters of the Moon, because it is caused by this spirituous substance.


The flow of the sea arrives, when this spirituous substance, seeking to escape through the waters, devours them, so to speak; it lasts as long as the magnetism of these coarse and heavy waters balances the effort of this spirit, but it ceases as soon as it has widened sufficiently and opened easier routes, and the waters which flow back then return to their level for a while.
XXI

Hence it is that the ebb and flow are found in the Ocean, and do not arrive in the Mediterranean; because the waters of the Ocean are thick and coarse, and those of the Mediterranean more subtle, and incapable of counterweighting the spirituous substance.
XXII

The rivers which contain a lot of this volatile spirit, and coarse water, are agitated, like the ocean, with ebb and flow.
XXIII

The Fountains in which we notice an ebb and flow cannot have one because their waters are coarse, since they are all very subtle: but rather because of the volatile mineral spirits which boil under the earth.
XXIV

Such is a Fountain which is found between the Pyrenees Mountains, which has an ebb and flow from hour to hour, because the water fills the pores of the earth, and thus prevents the mineral spirit from evaporating, which becoming sour, pushes the water so roughly out of its channel that in an hour it is completely exhausted; then in the following hour the canal fills with new water coming from the spring and other small streams, and thus the ebb and flow always occurs reciprocally.
XXV

This does not happen in winter, because the mineral spirit is not then so abundant in the earth, or because being less excited by sulfur, a principle, which influences less in this season, it condenses into water or smoke in the earth, & rises in less quantity & with less effort.
XXVI

We can also say that this mineral spirit is in smaller quantity, because the pores of the earth being closed and filled with coarse air, the elemental sulfur penetrates it less, to mix with the elemental water, and compose the radical humidity which generates everything, & increases the quantity of mineral spirits.
XXVII

Animals, on the contrary, contain more spirituous substance in winter, because they are fed without hindrance, and their pores being more closed, the perspirable parts do not evaporate so easily, and can only escape when They have reached extreme tenuity.
XXVIII

Thus this Fountain of the Pyrenees is not pushed in winter, nor agitated by the quantity & impetuosity of metallic spirits.
XXIX

Lake Geneva is more agitated in calm & serene weather than when the air is disturbed & overcast, because in calm & serenity, the impression of the weight of its column of air is direct; and that not being intercepted by the winds or the clouds, the waters of the lake are more strongly pressed, and do not allow an equally free exit to the central spirit of the earth.
XXX

If when this spirit substance rises, it is occupied with the specific spirits of different animals; Animals of these species are generated in the air, which fall back to earth with the water of the vapors which had raised them.
XXXI

Aqueous meteors contain the dominant water: thus their spirituous substance thickens into water by the cold, hail, snow, etc.
XXXII

Earth meteors contain the dominant earth more or less; thus when this spirituous substance is occupied by metallic or stony spirits, metals and stones are generated in the air, which then fall to the earth.
XXXIII

Thus we understand that nature elevates this spirituous substance, to purify it and then unite it with fixed matter to produce all things.
XXXIV

Thus the Chymist separates the two roots of the mixture, purifies them, unites them again to compose his arcana.
XXXIV

The character which signifies distillation is that of the celestial Lion; & the distilled water of the Philosophers is also called Lion; the two lower circles signify the two spirits, & the upper circle which unites the two others, signifies water, in which the chemical Sun is exalted by several distillations, just as the celestial Sun is exalted in the sign of the celestial Lion.

CHAPTER II
On the Distillation of Vegetables.

Aphorism I

The distillation of plants is the purification of their dissolved radical moisture.
II

This distillation is done both by cold and by heat; the cold tightens the body, and thus the heat gathers in the center and increases; then escapes and takes with itself the most subtle parts of matter. Then the water, having lost its hot spirit, freezes.
III

This happens to wine and other plant juices, and if we preserve the spirits in an alembic, we will have distilled them by cold in the container.
IV

By this escape of the spirits worn out by the cold, the plants die in winter.
V

When after putrefaction the fixed substance is dissolved, both roots, having become volatile, rise through distillation.
VI

In distillation, the heat must be very moderate, otherwise the spirits rise too abundantly, precipitously, and break the vessel.
VII

By this operation the two roots are exactly purified, and become the same aqueous substance, inseparable, permanent, and which, according to the Philosophers, is capable of flame; but inextinguishable or incombustible.
VIII

From there, lamps were invented which always burn, without consuming the oil. Such was the one found in the tomb of Tullia, daughter of Cicero, and which had not yet been extinguished for nearly two thousand years since it had been burning, when it was discovered during the Pontificate of Paul the Third, who lived in the sixteenth century. of the Christian Era. Such was also the one of which it is reported in the history of Padua, that it was still found burning with this Latin inscription, around the earthen vase, which served as a lamp in a very ancient tomb.

Plutoni sactum munus ne attinvite sure.
Ignotum est vobis boc quad in orbe latet.
Namque elementa gravi claudit digesta labore.
Vate sub boc modico Maximes olibius.
Adsit soecundo custos sibi copia cornu.
Ne pretisum tanti dispercat laticis.

Don't be too sure about Pluto's sacred role.
It is unknown to you that there is a quad hidden in the world.
For he closes the elements with heavy labor.
Vate under a small boc the greatest olives.
Let the keeper be present with plenty of horns for himself.
Don't let the price go to waste.

IX

The secret of the incombustible lamp can be derived from any animal or plant; but particularly of wine, because it contains more of both roots than any other mixture.
X

This distilled water made from the two roots is the radical humidity, in which the natural heat is fixed and permanent.
XI

Thus this water is a food very suitable for preserving life.
XII

Everything that is animated draws its life from the most general humid radical; Plants draw this moisture from the juice of the earth, and animals draw it from the juice of plants.
XIII

This very general humidity is a spirituous matter composed of the elements which have united and assembled in the bosom of the earth, and which are impregnated with the volatile spirit.
XIV

This composition of the elements receives impressions from the Sun, & other astral influences, the power of its magnetism.
XV

This celestial spirit binds itself to this radical humidity, and remains there all the more easily as they come very close to each other's nature.
XVI

The radical moist is nothing other than the very pure & immediate food, prepared by cooking, & not the distant & impure food.
XVII

The natural and specific heat, both of the plant and of the animal, is incessantly occupied in carrying out this purification, and in producing, as by degrees in the substances of food, a uniformity of parts, and a consonance of magnetism and action, which makes them suitable for being the nourishing balm, & the intimate nourishment of all the nervous & vesicular threads of the machine: it is for this purpose that nature has arranged so many reservoirs & successive channels, in which the nutritional juices receive continual elaboration and new purifications, until they have acquired a homogeneity which no longer resists the action of the vital fire of the individual.
XVIII

But whatever foresight nature may have had in the mechanics of the pipes & filters of the organized body; the agility & vivacity of the fire which possesses all its current strength, cannot so accurately unravel the chaos of the liquors intended to serve as food, nor bring them to such perfect purification, that there always remain foreign parts, which escape by their density and their mass from the penetration of the spirits and the leavens which produce the digestions.
XIX

Too large a quantity of food, the abundance of parts incapable of digestion, and the weakness of natural heat, also render liquors impure, and give rise to raw vegetables which increase every day, & increasingly interrupt specific magnetism; which finally causes the destruction of the compound.
XX

The Spagyrist separates the elements of the mixed from everything that is opposed to them & heterogeneous, he introduces a perfect union between the principles, & composes a permanent & astral or celestial substance; that is to say, whose magnetism is in the highest degree of exaltation, to which it can be brought; because the parts of its subject touch each other very immediately, and embrace each other very intimately by the proportion and suitability of their natures.
XXI

This celestial substance in purity is physical gold in each kingdom, because the pure essence of gold is at the same point of perfection in fire and art cannot take it beyond.
XXII

To extract the pure essence of gold, it must be dissolved in hyleal water which is of the same nature with it; we must cook these two homogenized natures until the consistency of very white sugar, then very red, which can melt in any kind of liquor and merge, and digest into the substance of chyle by the heat of our stomach.
XXIII

This pure essence of gold preserves our radical moisture, increases it & repairs it. It preserves it, because its elements are not contrary to it, although they are stronger, they are only stronger, because they are purer, and their purity makes their magnetism more powerful, less susceptible impressions of a dissimilar magnetism on the contrary, and capable therefore of distancing from this humidity the minds, which could corrupt and resolve it. It increases and repairs it, because the temperate heat that it insinuates even into the smallest fibers is analogous to that of the nourishing juice, and the most suitable for communicating the concoction to the liquors in all the channels of the animal machine. .

CHAPTER III
Of the Distillation of the Animal.

Aphorism I

The Secret of Animals preserves & repairs the animal, because it serves as food; & that it serves as a leaven for liqueurs, to convert them into immediate food.
II

It must therefore be very pure and very subtle, so that it can penetrate to the smallest parts of the animal to nourish them.
III

It does it by the same method as the other elixirs: we separate the two roots, we purify them by seven distillations, we combine them according to the weights which suit this reign; together they become a permanent water, which must be further purified seven times, or until perfect assimilation, & an intimate union of the substances, which entered into the composition of this elixir.
IV

The two roots must be exactly purified before being united; because the volatile foments and nourishes the fixed root, and thus must be immediately united to it.
V

Nature similarly purifies liquors, by circulating them in different channels, some of which lead to pipes, which serve to separate impure substances, and incapable of being converted into food by natural heat; the others end in corridors suitable for filtering the purest substance which must change into the nature of the mixed fuel.
VI

Spirits are very free in their action, and produce effects that we admire, when they are in a pure and subtle food.
VII

In proportion as minds radiate with fewer obstacles, all the springs of the machine are more flexible, and the successions of their movements more rapid: Hence we conceive with more clarity, that we judge with more accuracy, that the memory is more pressing, that the sensations are more vivid, the organs more delicate & more animated.
VIII

All sensations, on the contrary, and the functions of both the body and the mind, are disturbed when impure vapors interrupt the movements of the spirits, and the alternations of the springs, as happens in drunkenness, and in fits of hysterical passion for women.
IX

It is for these reasons that the Chemist purifies the two roots, that he then dissolves the fixed by the volatile by several imbibitions or waterings, that finally he unites them and composes the pure humid radical of the animal.
X

This system of chymic purification is signified in the poets by the fable of Ganymede, the Eagle, the Nectar & the Gods.

---

FIFTH SECTION: Sublimation.

CHAPTER ONE
Of Sublimation in general.

Aphorism I

The radical humidity of each natural mixture becomes, through chymic sublimation, a white salt, like snow, which can be melted very easily.
II

It is impossible for the fixed root to sublimate by itself, through any fiery violence whatsoever, until the volatile root has freed it from all the earthly starch, which is not of the nature of the central & radical salt of this mixture.
III

This terrestrial excrement can receive depuration by liquidation, or fusion, & conversion into glass; as we see happen in the crucibles of glassmakers, when the fire exactly occupies all the porosities of the earth, and having become as dry as it, it receives the movement of liquid, which it loses as soon as the igneous spirits come to escape; but it remains diaphanous by the straightness of its pores which always allow a free escape to the spirits of light, because they are of the nature of those from whom they take their figure & their position.
IV

We can believe that the earth we inhabit will receive the same purification by the fire of the last conflagration; that all spirits, both fixed and volatile, will be removed, will be fixed together, & united with other principal parts of the Universe.
V

This being assumed, the celestial bodies & those of the blessed, & the elements of the great world, will each be able to receive a portion of these spirits, by which they will have much more splendor than at present.
VI

Then all alterations, & vicissitudes of corruptions & generations must cease in nature; & all forms of the universe will remain eternally in their existence; because the ordinary movements and alterations in the system of the world only tend to the fixation of minds, only subsist and are maintained by the volatile, so that nothing will change as soon as they have acquired this fixity .
VII

Mixed bodies approach all the more the splendor and virtue of celestial bodies, as the material principles of their composition are purer and more homogeneous; like precious stones, worms that glow at night & the phosphors of the Philosophers.
VIII

Everything that comes from Heaven at the time of the generation of the mixed is also discovered in the resolution of this mixed.
IX

From which we can reasonably conclude by these words of the Great Hermes, what is above, & like what is below, & what is below & like what is above. Thus the matter of the Heavens differs from sublunary bodies only in purity, and not in substance.
X

The Sun is made up of the purest part of prime matter, in which earth & fire dominate.
XI

The Planetary stars and the Globe that we inhabit are composed of the coarsest and most impure parts, in which the element of water takes first place with the earth; air & fire are in very small quantities; which means that these stars are neither transparent nor self-luminous; but that through their opacity, they reflect the rays of light from the purest star.
XII

Water & air dominate in the spaces of the celestial Globes, so that they do not prevent the igneous matter of the Sun from passing between their Globes, & from transmitting its light to the ends of its largest sphere , which Copernicus called the great Whirlwind.
XIII

The matter of sublunary bodies is as incorruptible in its nature and in its substance as that of Heaven; but both are equally corruptible by accident; that is to say, insofar as they enter into the composition of corruptible bodies, from which they can then be released by the resolution of the mixture.
XIV

The volatile spirits of Heaven have an easy entry into the fixed unctuous matter of the sublunary bodies, with which they are easily fixed in the composition of the mixed, because they are of the same substance as it.
XV

Heaven, like all sublunary bodies, is made of the abyss, or the first matter of all things; but only from the most subtle part was Heaven made, and it is because of the tenuity of its matter that the name light is attributed to it.
XVI

The abyss is the raw material of all things which contains Heaven & Earth, the luminous stars & the planets; thus God separated the light from the darkness.
XVII

Everything that is of the nature of darkness tends to reunite with darkness, and to rush towards the earth, and everything that is of the nature of light naturally rises towards the light.
XVIII

The Artist likewise separates the subtle from the thick, and the celestial from the terrestrial, also the most subtle part of the mixture which is the object of our considerations, when it is raised on high, is always shiny, which makes know that Chemistry has in view in its sublimations only the separation of light from darkness.
XIX

This substance is represented by the fable of Antheus & Hercules; mercury can only be overcome by several sublimations which remove it into the air, as Antheus was removed by Hercules.

CHAPTER II
Of the Sublimation of Plants.

Aphorism I

The fixed root, being well purified, allows itself to be sublimated by the force of the volatile root, because it is overcome by the force of the latter.
II

Plants contain the volatile root in abundance: they attract it immediately from the earth, and animals only attract it from plants.
III

The conversion of the fixed into the volatile is done by the conjunction of the two sets, by digestion in a very gentle external heat, by sublimation in a stronger fire; by the repetition of infusion, digestion & sublimation, until everything rises.
IV

While this conversion is taking place, all the colors appear according to the different points of penetration of the fixed, by the volatile and the degrees of coction, of which the colors are so many signs.
V

The same change of colors happens in the multiplication of the Philosophers' stone, when it is perfect & accomplished because it is reincrusted all over again to decoy it, it dies as many times as it is dissolved, it is resurrected as many often it is fixed by coction.
VI

When the perfect union comes to be accomplished the white color appears; then continuing the concoction comes the citrine color, & then we can increase the heat without danger, to exalt & sublimate this color to the perfect red.
VII

Raw or volatile mercury is the main cause of the subtlety of the fusion, and consequently of the penetration that the stone acquires.
VIII

It is by Philosophical sublimation alone and not otherwise, that the stone acquires a sufficient quantity of raw mercury; thus the stone can only arrive at perfection through sublimation.
IX

By the good & perfect coagulation which depends on sublimation, the stone or the elixir acquires its final perfection; it is also towards this sublimation that all other operations tend, and through it they end.
X

This marvelous sublimation is the natural and central sulfur, and the flower of all mixed; that is to say, the purest & most subtle part, the intimate seed released & elevated from the center of impurities.
XI

Nature also sublimates the flowers in Spring, outside the center of the plants on the surface; & it is the most subtle part of their food which it then digests to the perfection of sweet and dies fruits.
XII

The mixed ones of each kingdom grow their flowers, in central sulfur, man his seed, nitre. Wool in its cotton, which is very similar to the true sulfur hidden by nature, gold its azure & so other bodies.
XIII

The sublimation which occurs by nature, and that which art produces, tend to the same end, which in both are the fruits and the seed.
XIV

Art joins the two purified roots of the mixture, to make them the same and unique volatile substance, it sublimates this unique substance, as long as it is in salt similar to talc, and it must then be carefully guarded.
XV

This sulfur, or sublimated without any other perfection, is wonderful for the health of the human body, and for the vegetation of plants, which it makes germinate, flower, and bear fruit four times a year.
XVI

This sulfur so powerfully increases the natural heat of the plant which is watered with it, that it constantly draws its nourishment from the earth, both for its nourishment and for the production of seeds.
XVII

This seed is always enveloped in a sperm which is the flesh, and the substance of the fruit that nature intends to serve as next food for the specific spirits of the seed, until they have formed an individual capable of attract the juices of the earth, & convert them into food.
XVIII

Plants become sterile due to lack of natural heat; because it follows from this defect that of food, seed, and fruit.
XIX

Plants which abound in natural heat do not take off their leaves, they are always green, germinate and bear fruit in their own time, naturally even four times a year in some regions.
XX

Animals give birth in all seasons, because they take their food freely; & this because their natural heat does not diminish by distance from the Sun; but that it rather increases in winter by the contraction of the pores.
XXI

Art can increase the natural heat of plants by the elixir dissolved in lukewarm water to often water the roots of these plants.

CHAPTER III
Of the Sublimation of Animals.

Aphorism I

The elixir of nature as well as that of art needs sublimation; the mineral produces its sulfur, the plant its flower, and the animal its seed.
II

The natural seed of the animal has the virtue of generating; which the chemical elixir of the animal cannot, unless it is made food by retrogradation, and from this food nature forms the natural seed.
III

The semen or chemical sulfur of an animal, although very conveniently introduced into the matrix, would not generate; but would only bring warming as would other external heat, and would easily escape from there, like a thing foreign and inconvenient to nature.
IV

The similar animal cannot be generated, neither from the chemical seed nor from the natural seed outside the animal, and separate parts of the body of the animal cannot be produced; because the vital spirit, which is the author of generations, cannot be retained by any artifice, when the parts are separated from the whole, and the general magnetism no longer remains to retain it, or repair it at any moment.
V

The prolific spirit of animals differs greatly from the nutritive spirit; because the generative spirit escapes at the death of the animal, and cannot be retained, because it is entirely volatile; but the nutrient remains in the flesh and blood after death, because it is watery and aerial.
VI

When the nutritive spirit escapes from the substance of the animal, it mixes in the air with the spirit of the world, and preserves its character. Until it produces or vegetates imperfect animated bodies, by joining with the fixed matter specific to these species, which it vivifies when it comes to encounter it.
VII

The prolific spirit cannot be retained nor join with the spirit of the world, because it is more subtle than the soul of the world, & than the proper matter of the Sky & the Sun itself.
VIII

From which it follows that the generative sperm of perfect animals is currently and in fact elsewhere only in similar animals, and not in the soul of the world, except in distant potential; that is to say, that the spirit of the world contained in the seed of animals, or rather in the body or spermatic matter of this seed, is the subject from which the spirits of the animal can produce the sensitive soul .
IX

In the soul of the world is contained the generative spirit of all other souls; which comes from the stars & operated with the specific spirits of all bodies mixed with generation.
X

From which it follows that the Sun and man do not generate man, neither the Sun & the lion generate the lion; but that the Sun & the plant generate the plant.
XI

The plant spirit, both nutritious and prolific, does not escape by the death of the plant, because it is aqueous & aerial, & retained by the virtue of water.
XII

Thus such a plant can come from the seed separated from the plant, from the very parts cut from the plant; the chemical elixir of the plant can also reproduce the same plant.
XIII

Paracelsus & Avicenna advanced without just foundation, that man can be generated outside of man by his seed; & that the human race can be repaired by the action of the Sun alone on the mud.
XIV

The animal elixir is nothing other than a fixed food, so that it cannot be dissipated by natural heat, like the regular food that always needs fixing.
XV

The animal elixir is fixed, because the volatile root is converted into earth; & this happened, because the earth was previously dissolved into a volatile aqueous & aerial substance.
XVI

Life is nothing other than the quintessence of food in an animated elementary body.
XVII

The more fixed this quintessence is, the less often it needs to be repaired.
XVIII

The chymic quintessence is drawn from foods, it is made very pure & very fixed; which means that it preserves & repairs life better than natural food.
XIX

In every elixir sublimation is necessary, because it is the last purification, without which the principles cannot immediately touch each other, and consequently the union cannot be perfect.
XX

Air & fire are the main supports of life, and so when they are very rarefied & fleeting, they can only give life a very short determination, & only a very fleeting nourishment.
XXI

The elixir is capable of powerfully resisting the violence of any fire; this is why it preserves the animal from all the impressions of ordinary leavens of diseases, being taken as food.
XXII

The sublimation of the animal elixir is done for three reasons, the first to convert the fixed into volatile, the second to change the volatile into fixed, the third to completely purify both by seven distillations.
XXIII

It is the same for all other elixirs with various types of mixture.
XXIV

The pure & perfect elixir produces surprising effects, just like the reasonable soul if it were stripped of its body, or rather when in its body it uses very pure & very active subtle spirits.
XXV

This happens both to the mad & afflicted soul, as when it is seized with mania, and to the healthy & wise one, as in those who walk around in their sleep.
XXVI

The spirits of these nocturnal walkers acquire more warmth and purity in sleep, so that their actions are often stronger; these people even during the day show more spirit, and are quicker, lighter and less restful than others, because of the purity and activity of their spirits.

---

SIXTH SECTION: Of the Union.

CHAPTER I
Of the Union in general.

Aphorism I

Union & fixation is only one thing, one operation, in the same vessel, the same furnace & the same fire.
II

It is in this single operation that the intimate and inseparable mixture of principles takes place; that their qualities are tempered and linked reciprocally, until they enter into perfect peace and concord; that finally magnetism is similar & uniform throughout the substance of the compound.
III

This is why we call this operation the reconciliation of contrary principles, the conversion of elements, the regeneration of the mixed, and the manifestation of clarity and effectiveness; or the true & perfect sublimation from the center to the circumference, the marriage of Heaven & earth, & the nuptial layer of the Sun & the Moon, of Peja & Gabertin, from which the Royal Child of the Philosophers must emerge. In this operation the same matter of the mixed which was previously remains, and the two roots remain: but not the same union in number, nor the same form particular to one and the other root, nor their same qualities: all these things differ in number, & have acquired a point of consonance & homogeneity, which makes them more perfect than before, by the multiplication of their magnetic power.
V

It is impossible by the Laws of Nature for two or more subordinate forms to occupy the same matter at the same time.
VI

Thus the Devil cannot add the form or soul of a wolf or other animal to the form or soul of man in the human body.
VII

Even less can he remove the form of man to put another in its place, or even give him back the one that has once emerged.
VIII

It is only God who can overthrow the order he has established in nature.
IX

What nature cannot do, the evil spirit cannot, since it is only a creature.
X

If the Devil could carry out the transmutation and change of forms from body to body, he would overthrow the entire order of nature to the contempt of God, and to the ruin of men.
XI

The Devil can deceive man by illusion in five ways. 1. Assuming real things transported from elsewhere. 2. By forming in the air the image of real things. 3. By forming this or that image in the imagination and in the eyes, as happens naturally to frenzied and drunken people. 4. By giving some melancholy illness. 5. By doing things himself, and making the man he deceives sleep, while he occupies his imagination with things specific to those he is doing.
XII

In lycanthropy the Devil entertains the imagination of absent man with dreams that he gives him; or if it is present it awakens an aerial body conforming to the spectra it wants to show, or covers it with well-fitting skins.
XIII

The man disguised in this way works beyond his ordinary strength, because the Devil uses the strength of this man and presses it very hard, as happens to people who are possessed.
XIV

This is why these people after this work remain all angry and half dead, because their strength is greatly diminished by the violence of the movements they have made.
XV

The metempsychosis of the Academicians is not a projection of the soul by which we live in another body; but only the conversion of one elixir into the other.
XVI

The humid radical crud of a mixed loses its spirits and its natural force, and receives the spirits and the virtues of the fixed elixir into which it is converted by form of food.
XVII

Thus the wolf can be converted into a lamb, and the lamb into a wolf by this change of elixir.
XVIII

The elixir of each mixture is nothing other than the humid radical filled with the spirits of this mixture.
XIX

The humid radical is called soul, because it is the immediate subject of the living soul, as the spirit is its efficient cause.


It is in this sense that the great world is said to be animated, that is to say, full of radical humidity, susceptible and capable of all kinds of souls, and likewise full of spirits which can produce the souls of mixed people.
XXI

Each raw elixir can be changed into cooked elixir by repeated imbibitions & coctions, by which it receives the virtue of the fixed & loses its own, which was of a contrary or incompatible but weaker nature.
XXII

In the same way celestial influences transport their effectiveness into a new subject, when through fixation they are converted into the substance of a mixture, and become dependent on its magnetism.
XXIII

The celestial influences naturally tend to unite with the radical humidity; they insinuate themselves into the earth where this humidity receives the combination of its elements, and contribute to determining the specification of its magnetism.
XXIV

All nature only aspires and breathes these influences, and is only animated by them; nothing can stop their course, nor prevent them from vegetating all the sublunary magnetisms, and from fulfilling their destinations.
XXV

All the stars & planets continually push their influences, which penetrate to the center of the earth more or less, according to the diversity of their movements & aspects, their approaches & distances from the earth.
XXVI

This is why the stars dominate more or less over each other, that is to say, they influence more powerfully; which is the reason why we do not speak of the influences of the stars which do not dominate, or whose effects are not remarkable.
XXVII

The sublunary bodies receive powerful impressions from these influences, which according to the different degrees of their exaltation & their penetration affect the lower magnetisms more or less, & communicate to them different properties.
XXVIII

Hence it is that several Philosophers assure that the domination of the favorable star must be observed in the union of the principles of the Elixir, because they claim that when this star dominates, it influences more virtue to the elixir. , only when the opposite star is dominant.
XXIX

We nevertheless note that the domination of the opposite star does not prevent the elixir from ending, because the fixed spirit always overcomes the volatile spirit.
XXX

But the elixir will, it is said, be less perfect than if it had been made under the domination of its propitious star.
XXXI

If the elixir were volatile, it could be overcome by the abundance and force of influences contrary to its magnetism, which would retain their properties and lose its own determination, or else from this contrariety of the two moving spirits, a substance could result. average & combined by the action of one & the other magnetism.
XXXII

The star which predominates at the time of animal production, imprints its virtues on the seed, because the spirits are volatile, and thus allow themselves to be overcome by the abundance of these influences.
XXXIII

The seed of animals always preserves, during the life of the body which is produced from it, the determinations which it received from celestial influences at the time of generation.


The makers of horoscopes thus judge the morals of men for all life, because the hour of nativity always corresponds to that of generation.
XXXV

Thus by the union of the two sperms, fixed & volatile, in which the two spirits are contained, the subject of celestial influences & virtues is specified & sublimated to the highest degree of its magnetic power; Heaven is made earth, and earth is made Heaven, and the energies of both are united.
XXXVI

But the less homogeneous and less digested elements which introduce themselves into the intimate and immediate subject of the motor spirits of life, combat this celestial spirit, so that it imperceptibly loses its power, and little by little its magnetism becomes inferior, & that his spirits dissipate with the life of the mixed.
XXXVII

Hence it is that the life of men seems to have diminished from age to age until now, because the strength & virtue of the human seed has always diminished.
XXXVIII

From which we can probably judge by the light of natural reason alone that generations must end.
XXXIX

It is still claimed that the medicinal virtues of plants and the energies of all other compounds have fallen far short of the perfection they had in the first centuries.
XL

For this reduction in the virtues of the first mixture of elements, the only remedy comes from the second mixture, through the chemical industry which makes it pure & permanent.
XLI

To a power or pure matter it is necessary to add a pure form whose energy is greater than that of an impure form.
XLII

Angels & reasonable souls have very powerful energies because of their purity.

CHAPTER II
Of the Union of Plants.

Aphorism I

The union is made between the fixed & the volatile in all reigns.


Life consists of the duration of the union, and death in the separation.
III

The first union that nature makes is dissoluble, because it is impure, the chymic union is permanent, because it is pure.
IV

The elixirs are not only longer lasting than the natural mixtures, but also more effective, as much because of the purity as the abundance and the union of the two roots.
V

The duration of the union depends on the immediate contact of the principles, & this contact depends on their purity.
VI

The abundance of roots increases natural heat, and consequently the energy of magnetism, the purity of these principles also extends the power of spirits, because it has removed the obstacles to natural heat, which would be suffocated in a subject impure.
VII

Hence it is that plants have more power or virtue in their youth than in their old age when impurities come to occupy their radical humidity.
VIII

Natural heat is the efficient cause of fertility and all fecundity; it is the soul of vegetation, which constantly fights and chases away the impurities of the mixtures: thus the cause being increased the effect increases in proportion.
IX

The natural heat is greater in elixirs, because the radical humidity is more abundant there; & this heat is also more permanent, because the same humidity is more cooked.
X

Among the mixed species the heat is more powerful in one than in the other, and also greater in one season than in another.
XI

The magnetic spirit, warm and celestial, is more abundant and more vivid under certain constellations than under others.
XII

The celestial spirit condenses and slows down by the cold and humidity of the air; & by means of humidity it enters the pores of the earth, and composes the radical humidity which nourishes all the mixed substances.
XIII

In times of long drought this spirit only flies through the air, without condensing or falling to refresh the earth; which causes sterility and the death of all mixed animals.
XIV

The movement of the Sun around the earth, according to Ptolemy; or that of the earth around the Sun, following the system of Copernicus, is done in an oblique line, so that the spirit of the world mixes with the elements in all the various Regions of the earth at different times, & by vicissitude.
XV

Under the Torrid Zone there are several fountains & rivers, of which the Sun raises the vapors which resolve into rain, which is full of these spirits, to make the earth fertile.
XVI

This invisible celestial spirit could not mingle with the elements if it was previously reduced to water, snow, or other watery meteors.
XVII

Likewise also in the chemical art this spirit would not be treatable, if it were previously reduced to water by distillation, by means of which it is first joined to the elementary, humid part, and then to the dry solid part. fixed.
XVIII

This spirit is a Proteus which changes into every form.
XIX

And ​​because it is found in everything, and is the main part of the stone, we say that the stone is found in everything.

CHAPTER III
Of the Union of Animals.

Aphorism I

Life is nothing other than the duration of celestial heat in a subject composed of the elements.
II

From this union of the elements results the soul; & this soul is diverse according to the different disposition of the subject.
III

The soul, both vegetative and sensitive, is produced in the subject by the action of celestial heat, determined in this subject to a specific magnetism: but the reasonable soul undoubtedly comes from the sole action of God.
IV

Mixtures which differ in genus or species cannot be produced from a similar subject, or from a matter disposed of the same kind, nor from the same specific action.
V

The celestial heat disposed the subject by consecutive degrees; & when the last degree is acquired, it produces the form, or homogeneous & general magnetism.
VI

Thus natural heat changes animal heat, first into a substance similar to milk, then into blood, then into nourishing juice & into various members finally it produces the soul for which its degrees are intended.
VII

Animals are the noblest of all mixed species, both in terms of their matter which is very pure and very subtle, and in terms of their form, which produces very perfect actions.
VIII

All nature tends by its movement to the level of animals, as to the most perfect, and as to the end where it desires to rest.
IX

It cannot nevertheless remain in this degree for long, because the matter of animals dissipates too easily, and it does not sufficiently resist contrary agents.
X

It is probable for several reasons that the lives of our first Fathers were longer than ours. Firstly, because God created everything to the most perfect degree of generations, which were then to diminish and end.
XI

Secondly, because the humid radical of our first Fathers was purer than ours.
XII

The sensitive soul is purer & more perfect than any other elementary & celestial form.
XIII

Consequently, nature could never unite it with our sublunary matter, gross and completely impure by its own forces; at least so often & so easily, as we see it happening at all times, without the particular help of God, who directs his actions & directs his movements.
XIV

Thirdly, the life of our first Fathers must have been longer, because their food was purer than ours; & thus fuller of radical humidity, & consequently of natural heat & active virtue.
XV

Fourthly because our first Fathers had more fixed & permanent radical humidity, the force of which is diminished in the course of time by the degrees of generations as well as the permanence & duration of natural heat.


Nature in the womb of animals at the time of generation provides as much as it can, & the quantity, & the duration of natural heat.
XVII

It does this by purifying, uniting, & fixing the roots of the radical humidity, in which this same nature is hidden.
XVIII

But she cannot achieve perfection in her work because the natural heat is too weak, and the excrement is too abundant.
XIX

Art cannot communicate to nature any new energy, but it removes the excrement which prevents natural energy from producing its effects.
XX

Thus the spirit of wine does not ignite while it is in the impure body, but only when it is separated from it by distillation.


The excrement absorbs the subtle pure, & suffocates the natural heat.
XXII

The true substance of wine consists of the fiery aerial & igneous water, the rest is only an terrestrial & aqueous excrement that nature has not been able to separate by the fermentation of the must.
XXIII

Thus elixirs contain no other virtue than that which was naturally in the mixtures themselves: but it is made pure & free by the chemical industry.
XXIV

All mixed people had more virtue in the first centuries than now, according to the opinion of many Philosophers; because, they say, the newly implanted central virtue was purer, more fixed, and therefore stronger.
XXIV

The strength of natural heat depends on the abundance & permanence & fixation of radical humidity; all these qualities must contribute equally and at the same time.
XXVI

The young man is strong because his radical humidity is abundant & fixed, & consequently his natural heat also fixed & abundant: the radical humidity of children is abundant, but volatile; that of old people is fixed, but in small quantity, and it is still burdened with excrement; that is why neither is strong.
XXVII

The radical moisture is fixed in old people by the long cooking that the natural heat has produced: but nevertheless a lot of volatile radical moisture escapes, and the excrement increases more and more.


The radical humidity, through long cooking, becomes so fixed that it is finally no longer capable of alteration, as happens to gold, silver, and some precious stones.
XXIX

Elixirs make a pure substance, extracted from a large mass, & reduced to a small volume of matter, which is filled with celestial influences.
XXX

The celestial heat is in the elixir of animals all the same in magnetic virtue as that which was united to the seed at the time of generation.
XXXI

This original heat is strong, because its subject is pure & fixed, or in immediate & permanent contact with it.
XXXII

The celestial spirit which united with matter at the time of the generation of the mixed, cannot subsequently be separated from it by any artifice.
XXXIII

This first material of the generation of the mixed is not corruptible.
XXXIV

But this spirit of generation is prevented from its actions, & suffocated, so to speak, by the quantity of excrement.
XXXV

This celestial spirit is the author & efficient cause of all alterations & generations that take place in matter.
XXXVI

However, she does not act without being excited by volatile spirits.
XXXVII

This primary heat which is communicated to matter at the time of generation, is indifferent to all generation, and to producing all kinds of forms to matter.
XXXVIII

It is determined by the spirit which is excited and which acts on matter, and it only produces the form to which this spirit leads it.
XXXIX

In substantial corruption the external volatile spirits contrary to the internal & natural ones disturb the economy of matter, until they have overcome the natural spirits, & dissipated the form of the mixed; so that these new spirits occupy the place of the first in matter, and produce another form to which they have disposed this matter.
XL

The mixed & its form retain their positive & specific existence as long as the internal & natural spirits retain their magnetism in matter.
XLI

These natural spirits last all the longer as they are more fixed in matter at the time of generation.
XLII

The humid radical of animals is nothing other than the first composition of the elements impregnated with specific & particular celestial spirits, at the very time of the generation of animals.
XLIII

Thus the duration of life depends on the duration of matter, the abundance of spirits, & their fixation.
XLIV

We can also reasonably infer from this that the stars dominate all living species, through their influences,
XLV

The constitution of the radical humid and the temperament are only the same thing.
XLVI

The driving principle of life, and of all the determinations of the animal machine, can only give rise to any movement with the help of temperament, to which it is necessarily linked to produce its actions.
XLVII

So when the temperament is altered, the actions are also altered.
XLVIII

The temperament receives an alteration, when the determination of the movements of its natural spirits is changed by the impression of external agents.
XLIX

But when these natural spirits dissipate, and their subject is entirely destroyed by the contrary action of the impurities which comes to prevail, the soul sweats,
L

The reasonable soul depends on the temperament, not to subsist in its nature, but to be united with the organic body.
LI

As the reasonable soul does not depend on temperament for its existence, so it does not depend on it for all its immediate actions.
LII

The reasonable Soul & of certain actions which are proper to it, independent of the subject to which it is united, & which it exercises freely, although it is moved in some force by influences.
LIII

The animal chemical union is not between the soul and the body: but between the roots which are the radical humidity.
LIV

The elixir which is made from the flesh or blood of animals,
LV

The elixir of animals differs from ordinary foods, not in substance nor in energy: but in purity, fixation, & promptness of action.

---

SEVENTH SECTION: Coagulation.

CHAPTER I
Of Coagulation in general.

Aphorism I

Coagulation of the roots is the next degree of perfect fixation; one and the other are done at the same time, continue and end in the same furnace, and in a single vessel, both natural and artificial.
II

The humid radical which is not fixed, but only coagulated, soon allows itself to be overcome by external agents dissimilar to its specific nature, which is significantly altered, and changed in a short time into an entirely different substance. The one on the contrary which is fixed & permanent does not yield to any external agent.
III

The humid radical of gold, silver, salt, glass, and certain stones is perfectly fixed and therefore unalterable.
IV

That of imperfect metals, mineral means, plants & animals is only coagulated.
V

The humid radical to be led to fixation must necessarily pass through coagulation, as by the average degree.
VI

Coagulation as well as fixation is nothing other than the union of the volatile with the fixed more and less strong; it is the conversion of the humid into dry, & the occultation of the fluid humor.
VII

At the beginning of the Physical work, everything that can achieve fixation is changed into water; heterogeneous substances cannot be fixed, because they do not dissolve in water.
VIII

In the center of each mixture there is a pure substance, the roots of which are in that degree of union & fixity, which is almost insurmountable, or impenetrable to the power of any natural agent; it contains the energy & the specific character of its mixture, whatever change it may receive the sperm where it is hidden.


This substance, incorruptible by its purity, is enveloped in other heterogeneous substances, which cannot resist external agents, which, coming to penetrate them, break the chain of spirits with their magnetism, and consequently the force which united their parts; so that they become volatile, and are easily separated from the fixed grain which they surrounded.
X

However well dissolved this fixed substance may appear, by the action of its volatility; it nevertheless always tends to become permanent, and fixity is natural to it in the center of the mixed.
XI

Thus when the intrinsic dryness of this substance is increased by the aid of external heat, and the natural fire which constitutes its magnetism has become more powerful, by the new spirits which it receives from the external fire; it acts on the humidity which surrounds it, it penetrates its molecules, determines them to the dryness which is proper to it, and fixes them in the nature of its subject.
XII

Chymic fixation is more constant & firmer than the natural one; because the natural fire, which is too extensive in the spontaneous mixed, is extracted from it by the chemical art, & brought together in much greater quantity although by the separation of the unnatural fire, or of the heterogeneous substances, the mixed is reduced into a very small volume.
XIII

The elixir cannot be dissolved nor its roots separated by the force of any element: but in the mixture it communicates its perfection, and shares it with other substances which tend to their nature.
XIV

Things which are perfect in an eminent degree contain more perfection than is necessary to preserve their mixture; the magnetic fire of its substances can, in proportion to its degree of exaltation, extend further into the bodies of the same kind of its subject, and expel with more force the impurities which overwhelm the too scattered fire of these mixtures.
XV

Thus, when these substances which approach closest to supreme purity have communicated part of their perfection to other perfectible substances, or capable of receiving a more perfect concoction; the degree which results in the whole is still sufficient to prevent it from being corruptible.
XVI

It is by this mechanism that the powder of the chymic magisterium placed in projection perfects imperfect metals and that it is not therefore changed in its substance, nor deprived of the fixity which is essential to it: but that it loses only degrees of its perfection, or of the power of its magnetism, by the division & extension of its integral parts in a less pure & less fixed subject.
XVII

The fixation which comes from nature alone & without the help of art is always imperfect, due to the lack of an immediate union of the two roots & a coction which very perfectly & very intimately converts the volatile part into magnetism of the most fixed part, and which consequently provides it with exaltation and sovereign power.
XVIII

The chymic fixation is perfect because of the immediate union of the roots & the unity of magnetism which is introduced by the coction.
XIX

Before the evangelical resurrection, the great Author of Nature purifies the body & the soul, which in the resurrection he must unite & fix for ever.
XX

Thus the Artist purifies the two roots of the mixed, then afterwards unites them & fixes them inseparably.
XXI

The analogy of these two fixations is the reason why the name resurrection is given to the chymic fixation as well as to the other.
XXII

The mixed, before being perfectly purified, rejects all excrement; this purification takes place in him through death which corrupts the natural mixture.
XXIII

In this death & corruption the roots which alone compose the essence of the mixture or its specific magnetism, & contain its vegetative & generative virtue, remain without any lesion... XXIV
The

grain of corn & the other seeds, being placed in the ground , rejects through the corruption that happens to him the excrement that prevented his actions; & its prolific material power, nor its specific form,
XXV

Thus the death of mixed bodies is of two kinds, one absolute and substantial, the other accidental.
XXVI

Absolute death is the essential separation, & the loss of the roots & the intimate form of the mixed; the accidental is only the separation of excrement with the conservation of pure roots & the form which contains the idea of ​​the mixed.
XXVII

Absolute death is the total corruption of the mixed; Accidental death is a new generation in the same species of the mixed, and a necessary means for it to become perfect.

CHAPTER II
Of the Coagulation of the Plant Elixir.

Aphorism I

The Vegetal draws its origin from a fixed elementation which enjoys a volatile spirit which is specific to it, & a nature particular to vegetable salts, or which only determines its subject in vegetative extension, by the quality of its magnetism, which preserves the parts of the body in vegetation, while this spirit does not receive any contrary impression: but which comes to be overcome and to undergo a different determination, lets the plant perish.
II

It is from this volatile spirit particular to the plant that results the general magnetism of the plant, or the vegetative soul which produces all vegetative functions.
III

For without this spirit fixed matter could neither extend & expand, nor rise & penetrate the insensible pores of the body; because its consistency is coarse, and also heavy, because of the water and earth which dominate in its mixture.
IV

Animals also have volatile spirits, but they are closer to the nature of air and fire; so that their active virtues are more excellent.
V

The spirit or seed of plants is more aqueous and aerial than that of minerals, hence the plant spirit extends further and has greater energies than the spirits of minerals.
VI

To give plants all the perfection they can receive, they must be resolved and their roots drawn out: but he who does not know them loses them when he has found them, even before the resolution arrives.
VII

When we know how to recognize these roots, when we have separated & purified them, we must convert the fixed root into a volatile one, in order to sublimate it with the same volatile; because of itself it could never rise by any violence of fire.
VIII

This conversion can only be done by several impositions & imbibitions of the volatile root.
IX

This sublimated must then be purified by several sublimations; then fixed by slow, gentle & continuous heat.
X

Plants are subject to corruption: but in the center of corruption is hidden an incorruptible root, which being made free produces admirable effects.
XI

This pure & incorruptible substance is an authentic testimony of all power, & of the immortality of the supreme being: but the art which brings together the natural perfections of the mixes, makes these images of the divinity much more sensitive than when they are covered with the veil of the elements.
XII

The mixed species of other kingdoms also have only weak energies, both for nutrition and for health if they do not die from the separation of their excrement.
XIII

All the virtue & power of the mixed is in the pure & homogeneous substance that it contains, and not in the excrement, which on the contrary prevents the virtue of the mixed, & leads it to a substantial corruption, as happens in old age .
XIV

Hence it comes that when the pure substance of the mixture is burdened with too large a quantity of excrement, and the force of specific magnetism can no longer balance that of the impurities; natural virtue is overcome, disorder excites in liquors, foreign ferments disturb the mixed economy, corrupt it; & by this means the essential part frees itself from its prison.
XV

Natural medicines contain a large quantity of excrement, and nature is obliged to separate them to benefit from the medicinal virtue they contain.
XVI

But during this work nature is often weakened by the irritations caused on the membranes of the stomach by the impurities which attach to them; because these repeated shocks dissipate many of the natural spirits, violate the springs of the fibers, occupy all the forces of nature, to restore calm to these parts, while it abandons its other functions; so that these causes often come from greater disorders than those which we wanted to remedy.
XVII

The medicines that the Spagyric art prepares have very great energy,
XVIII

Medicinal virtue depends on the spirits of specific magnetism, that is to say, on the form of the mixed; for form is the principle & cause of all natural faculty, & uses temperament as a necessary instrument for its actions.
XIX

The perfection of the form or energy of the spirits of specific magnetism, depends on the purity of its subject, or contact of the roots of this natural magnet.
XX

The subject of all forms is none other than the humid fixed radical & composed of pure elements.
XXI

Thus the natural mixture is all the more perfect as everything is more homogeneous & purer, like man, light, Heaven, the soul separated from the body, the Angels.
XXII

We also judge that medicines are more effective if they are purer or have more uniform magnetism in all their parts; this is why nature itself always works on the separation of excrement.
XXIII

The chemical art leads nature to the purity that it intends for itself by its own instinct and draws from the mixed substances a medicine capable of exciting and increasing the life and virtue of natural mixed bodies.
XXIV

For the vital spirit is concentrated & hidden in a gross & inactive matter: but when it is freed from this prison, from whatever kingdom it may be, & in whatever subject it is introduced, it operates there admirable effects.

CHAPTER III
Of the Coagulation of the Animal Elixir.

Aphorism I

The animal substance takes its origin from the first humid radical, which is the first hyle, or the seed of the elements of which all the mixed ones are equally produced.
II

The radical substance of animals does not differ from their last and immediate food, any more than their prolific seed differs from this very substance.
III

The prolific seed of each genus is contained in the pure substance of the mixed and not elsewhere.
IV

Hyle or very general pure matter is converted to the hyle of minerals; the latter to the hyle of plants, & the latter, to the hyle of animals through nutrition.
V

Hyle, raw material, radical substance, radical humid, last food, prolific seed, are expressions almost synonymous with the same thing in each kingdom.
VI

The mixed ones of one kingdom are useless to those of another kingdom, until the humid radical of one is converted into the humid radical of the other kingdom: it is properly then that the mixed of one kind nourishes mixed of another kind, and not before.
VII

This conversion is done by the change from the aerial & igneous degree of one kingdom to the aerial & igneous degree of the other.
VIII

Now this change of degree happens, when the volatile magnetic spirit of the mixed fuel penetrates the food, excites an orgasm there with the air & fire it encounters there, goads them & imprints on them the determination of its movement; thus the degree of activity increases in the spirits of the food, the pores are changed, and the substance is converted into that of the mixed food.
IX

The aerial & igneous animal spirit easily finds entry into the aerial & igneous spirit of plant food; & the latter likewise receives the impression & character of the other by the suitability & similarity of the essential parts of this plant spirit with the integral parts or substance of the animal spirit.
X

In all the radical humidity, and in all the food, there is some degree of fire with its energy, mixed with the degrees of the other elements and their energies.
XI

However small this portion of the sulphurous & igneous principle may be, the continual action of its magnetism, while the mixed goes through various corruptions & solutions, always consumes some part of the element which predominates in the compound; & this magnetism, invincible by the force of the other elements, constantly prints new alterations, until it itself becomes entirely superior, and its power has subjugated the entire composition.
XII

The most fixed principle, which is fire, in fact subsequently becomes victorious over the other elements, whatever obstacle its magnetism may receive from other agents.
XIII

It is by this means that plant seed changes into animal seed; thus the seed or the mineral humidity is converted into the plant seed by the mixing of the aerial spirit of the plant fed with the aerial spirit of the mineral which serves as food, so that it subjects the other elements.
XIV

The volatile spirits which circulate around the roots of plants carry with them in their movement, everything which is found in the neighboring earth capable of determining their magnetism: thus these spirits which had escaped through the smallest pores, not encountering of nuts which suit them as much as those which they have abandoned, reflect towards their magnet charged with molecules which possess in their center a spirit of the same nature as them: in fact having become weaker, because they have communicated their action to the particles they carry, they are repelled by contrary spirits who oppose their progress; moreover they are struck laterally by the other spirits which come out of their same center,
XV

This new food which has insinuated itself into the fibrous tubes of the root, is supported in its progression; both by the oscillation of these same pipes which compress it successively from bottom to top, as well as by the more subtle spirits which radiate from the fibers, and which take the place of its valves; besides the impulse of the new juice which follows the same road.
XVI

This juice infiltrated into the first canals of the root is attenuated and digested there, just like the food in the stomachs of animals; because the magnetic spirits of the parts of the food find themselves shocked on all sides & thrown out of their way by the crowd of new spirits contrary to their direction which naturally dominate in the subject which surrounds them.
XVII

Thus the molecules of the food become heterogeneous in their very insensible parts, and are attenuated as much as they could be penetrated by the spirits of this digestion.
XVIII

While these looser parts become more and more rare in the liquid which embraces them, those which are still too far from the degree of their movement and their tenuity, separate by the contrariety of their magnetism, and roll longer in the channels, before they are converted into the substance of the mixture.
XIX

The more digested parts enter the smallest fibers of the plant; & the coarsest ones remain in the largest pipes.
XX

Plant juices circulate as well as animal liquors.


The juices capable of digestion pass from the root into the body of the plant; & the excess food returns from the plant to the root.
XXII

That which resists digestion, both in the root and in the stomach; so that it cannot be dissolved, to separate the impurities, is also venom to the plant and the animal.
XXIII

That which resists and cannot yield to the penetration of digestive spirits and dissolving juices, necessarily offends the archaeum of the stomach, like that of the root, corrupts the natural humidity, and renders it equally heterogeneous and incapable of receive no digestions in other pathways.
XXIV

The magnetism of these heterogeneous molecules and incapable of digestion, far from being overcome and destroyed by the spirits and the natural juices of the stomach, or of the root, on the contrary appropriates as much as its subject can receive, These molecules are sometimes even swollen in such a way that their less connected parts separate, no longer being able to contain them; which produces a very superficial digestion, or rather a corruption, which in the stomach excites the fibers to violent shocks, by the opposition of their magnetism with that of this indigestible & corrupted matter.
XXV

These violent shocks drive the corrupted matter out of the stomach, which carries with it all the natural liquid that the fibers have expressed in the efforts they have suffered.


But if the matter which is introduced follows in the stomach or in the root, is not even corruptible by the juices of digestion; it is a venom to both.
XXVII

This incorruptible food which is venom, is not such by any particular quality in the radical substances: but by their combination with their sperm or excrement.
XXVIII

The humid radical of any mixture is temperate in its nature, & convertible to the temperament of another humid, it is only intemperate & inconvertible by its excrement.
XXIX

The animal elixir is brought to its perfection by the purgation of its roots, their coagulation & their fixation, like other elixirs.
XXX

The fixed root cannot be purified without first being made volatile by the volatile root, which must also have been purified; this volatile root cannot be fixed otherwise than by the fixed root that it has dissolved.
XXXI

The Egyptians designated this union of the two roots by the hieroglyph of a circle made of two serpents, one of which is winged and the other wingless.
XXXII

We would work in vain to achieve this union if we had not first purified the roots; because any excrement prevents immediate contact.
XXXIII

What makes natural mixtures resist external agents so weakly is because the chain of their magnetism is interrupted on all sides, and as if interrupted by the excrement which prevents the union and the immediate outcome of their parts.
XXXIV

All the operations of Chemistry only tend to provide mixed people with this purity which they finally acquire for them; nature in its movements has the same view; but it cannot achieve this perfection.
XXXV

In the nutrition of animals, nature purifies foods by several instruments and different ways of operating before it can convert them into the radical moisture, and into the intimate substance of the compound.
XXXVI

Nature observes the same ways & ways of operating in generation, as in the nutrition of each mixture that it animates: thus nutrition can be called a new generation.

---

SECOND PART: Of the Mineral Elixir

CHAPTER ONE
Of the Calcination of Minerals.

Aphorism I

The practice of the mineral elixir consists of the separation of the fixed & the volatile, in the purgation of these two substances, & their new union, more perfect than that which nature had given them.
II

There are minerals which contain only a little volatile humidity; others have a lot of it, but it is impure and closely linked to its body from which it is very difficult to separate it; some others have received in their composition a lot of this volatile humidity, which is pure and easy to strip of the terrestrial excrement which surrounds it. The molten metals are deprived of their volatile humidity, which was the motive of their vegetation.
III

The humid fixed radical is the unique subject and matter of all mixed forms; & the purest matter receives the purest form.
IV

The purest form gives the purest being to its mixture, and the perfection of one results from the perfection of the other.
V

We free the mixture of all impurity, by corrupting it, to separate more easily the pure humid radical, which we bring by coction & animation to the degree of fixed tincture, which is the perfection of the chemical work.
VI

Mineral physical tincture is this Phoenix which is reborn from its ashes. They are done by the separation or extraction of the fixed & the volatile, out of its viscous earth, which can be dissolved by air or by common water; & we then purify these principles, and bring them together with the help of the heat of the Sun & the Moon; & with the help of the unnatural fire, which is that of our homes, we complete this Saturnian venom which holds all imperfect metals, and cures all Lepers of its kind, according to the words of the Scholars in this Art.
VII

In metals which have been melted, only the fixed remains which is pure and in quantity in gold and silver; in all other metals it is impure & in small quantities.
VIII

In metals which have not been melted, the volatile is only in small quantity, and even very impure in the imperfect ones, but pure in gold and silver.
IX

In the semi-minerals of Art, such as vitriols, the volatile is more or less abundant, more or less pure.
X

Thus draw the volatile from the mineral means of the Art, purge it, then by this volatile draw the fixed out of the perfect metals; attach them together, & you will have the elixir.
XI

There is a mineral, known to true Scientists who hide it in their writings under various names, which contains abundantly the fixed and the volatile; separate, purge, fix them together without adding any foreign matter, & you will witness the secret movements of nature, & the paths it follows in the production of the mixtures it composes.
XII

If we mix heterogeneous spirits with the earth of perfect metals, surprising but dangerous effects occur, as we see in fulminating gold.
XIII

We extract from the mineral of art, by calcination, the mercury of Art; & by the same operation we extract from this mercury the sulfur and the salt of Art.
XIV

These three principles united by calcination, according to the weights of Art, compose the perfect magisterium in the fourth wheel of chymic work.
XV

This Calcination is the conversion of the immediate food into the substance & into the seed of the mixture which is nourished by it.
XVI

Where the seed is, the generation is present, while this seed is in a food proper to it; there itself is the center of vegetation, & the principle of all the other actions of life.
XVII

The last food, or the immediate food, is a juice which is not yet converted into the substance of the mixture; & which, when it has changed, is no longer food, but the proper substance of this mixture.
XVIII

The metal which has been melted no longer has juice, nor food, nor generation; it is only a sterile substance, and a body without a soul.
XIX

Thus we cannot immediately extract any seed from a metal which has been melted; but it can be regenerated by various corruptions to the state of virgin metallic earth, which contains the seed, and from which it can be extracted, but this path is long and costly.
XX

There is a nitrous mineral which easily gives the two roots it possesses, from which we make a circulation which vivifies & animates perfect metals; it extracts a substance which art converts into metallic sulfur; which is the base of the elixir.
XXI

The perfect body is the matrix & the place in which the two seeds are cooked & are made particular; the three together become the tincture of the Philosophers, and not the body alone, because it is stripped of all vivifying spirit.
XXII

The body alone can become fuse salt, capable of great effects; this body is called metallic earth, leafy earth, the mysterious Diana of the Ancients.
XXIII

This earth is accustomed to being impure in its exterior, because it is usually extracted from its mine by means of things full of spirits which are not metallic, and which make it unfit to become tincture or sulfur.
XXIV

These impurities can only be separated by means of the metallic spirit alone which is abundantly in our permanent water.
XXV

The metallic spirit is abundant in certain minerals which are not metals, but it is so fixedly attached to the volatile excrements that separation can only be achieved by corruption.
XXVI

The unique mineral which abounds in both spirits, easy to separate, is hidden under almost as many different names as there are things in the world.
XXVII

This mineral contains in itself various substances; namely two, which are the body & the soul, or the fixed & the volatile; he has three, if you want to distinguish the spirit from the soul; four even,
XXVIII

Fixed humidity & fixed dryness are hidden in the fixed part of the mixture which remains after Calcination; the soul & spirit are hidden in the volatile humidity which is distilled.
XXIX

The spirit & the soul rise in the form of white smoke.
XXX

The spirit is a heavy smoke which soon descends, and hides in the pores of the distilled superfluous humidity.
XXXI

The soul is a smoke which does not descend until very late, and which only joins with the water after a long circulation in the still and the container; finally it is converted into water.
XXXII

Although the soul appears in the form of white smoke, it is nevertheless called red smoke, because it generates our red leafy earth, by a light and continual decoction with the earth of the gold of the Philosophers.
XXXIII

The fifth substance which is contained in the nitrous mineral of the art, besides the four others preceding, is only an excrement which must be separated & rejected.
XXXIV

Fixed humidity causes the body to melt in fire like metal; & fixed dryness is the cause that the same body freezes as soon as it is removed from the fire, & this dry substance is fixed salt.
XXXV

The radical substances must be separated, purged, & fixed, & the secret will be accomplished.
XXXVI

The practice is strong distillation, exposure of the black earth to resolve it, & the distillation reiterated so many times, that almost all the earth is converted into volatile spirit.
XXXVII

The water which is distilled draws the dye from the earth, and the two together become metallic sulfur; we further dissolve this sulfur with the same water, we cook it to the perfection of volatile gold sulfur; we dissolve it again, and finally we cook it until the perfection of the elixir.
XXXVIII

The qualities & virtues of this physical earth are, fixity, easy fusion, softness, beautiful color, transmuting projection, healing of all illness.
XXXIX

Thus Heaven and earth are conjoined; water is drawn from the rays of the Sun & the Moon, & the spirit of the world is made mineral.
XL

The elixir consists of the permanence of the celestial spirit in matter.
XLI

Nature begins the elixir, but cannot complete it, because of the weakness of its heat, which cannot reject all the excrement.
XLII

We see that the animal attracts air by breathing; this air contains a celestial spirit which repairs the radical humidity.
XLIII

The viscous radical humidity of the animal is not air alone which is too subtle, nor food alone which is too coarse.
XLIV

The two together compose a medium substance suitable for nourishing the animal, which substance is not entirely fixed, but only coagulated.
XLV

Thus the spirit of the world diversifies into the substances of the three kingdoms to nourish and multiply them.
XLVI

This spirit is the unique source of the radical humidity of the earth, where it combines differently with the various compounds it encounters there.
XLVII

The spirit of the world is called soul by similarity; hence it has been said that the great world is animated.
XLVIII

The spirit of the world is alcohol & the most subtle part of the elements; it is the universal nature, which of itself is invisible, incorruptible, indifferent to all form: but it becomes visible in a pure body, and visible such as fixed salt.
XLIX

From this soul with the body which is proper to it, the fixed physical tincture is made by decoction, in which the entire movement of nature ends and ends.
L

Nature cannot achieve this perfect rest without the help of art.
LI

The chymic art continues the practice of the elixir by purging the black earth until whiteness or redness; he purifies the volatile spirit, & makes the solution of the earth by his spirit.
LII

The ancient Spagyrists had the habit of soaking the raw earth several times with its raw spirit, and dephlegming it every eight days, and during this work the colors appeared black, white, and red; but this path is long & dangerous.
LIII

Of a perfect metal, with strong water and common mercury, chemical work cannot be done.
LIV

True water which is homogeneous with metals must be drawn from a martial & solar mineral; & by this water the tincture of the metal must be extracted from its body; & in this operation the dye is still only rotten gold.
LV

The mineral elixir, in addition to the virtue of transmuting, can acquire through art several other virtues, at the will of the Artist.


Each elixir can be converted into another elixir, in the same way that food changes into the substance of the mixture fed.
LVII

Nature by its own movement exercises this reciprocal conversion in the nutrition of mixed people.
LVIII

The reason for this conversion is the action of one spirit on the other, and the necessity where the weaker is to follow the determination of the stronger.
LIX

The strongest converts the weakest; but the fixed is stronger than anything volatile, and thus the volatile nourishes the fixed.
LX

The more heterogeneous substance it contains, the more the food resists the spirits of digestion.
LXI

The food which resists so that it cannot be converted, is a venom to the body nourished; because it tames this body and converts it into itself, or else a third substance is generated from it by the mutual corruption of the food and the body that it was to nourish.
LXII

Impure & crude metallic spirits kill the animal that wants to feed them, because they resist & alter powerfully.
LXIII

Each thing is nourished and multiplied more surely by the spirits of its reign, which are pure, than by others.
LXIV

The decoction of mineral spirits is longer & more difficult than that of plants & animals.

CHAPTER II
Of the Putrefaction of Minerals.

Aphorism I

There are two kinds of putrefaction, one chymic or accidental, the other non-chymic, which is a substantial corruption, and the entire destruction of the composite.
II

The first is caused by the internal heat of the mixture, the other comes from the external humidity and its spirits.
III
Among the mixed, some are subject to absolute corruption, others not.
IV

The metallic secret begins with nature and ends with art.
V

In this work, natural raw gold is brought by a long digestion to a purity and perfection incomparably superior to that of common gold.
VI

Gold only differs from the pure substance of imperfect metals because it is more cooked and more ripe.
VII

The matter of minerals differs from that of plants only by the magnetic spirits of the mineral kingdom.
VIII

The very general matter is made particular to the three kingdoms by the magnetic spirits specific to each kingdom; thus this matter passes from one kingdom to another, when it is seized & determined by the spirits of another kingdom.
IX

The immediate nourishment of each mixture is nothing other than this very general matter occupied by the spirits of the kingdom to which it is converted.
X

The immediate food is not yet the actual substance of the mixed food, but a matter of the same nature which is different only in the degree of cooking.
XI

The immediate food of animals is found in viscous form between the fibers of the flesh, and becomes yellow by an artistically carried out elixation.
XII

All mixtures are of the same matter that composes us; but the combination of material principles is different in all genera, and perhaps in each species of mixture, because the magnetisms are different in each kingdom, and vary even in individuals, although there is a lot of proportion, and a kind of uniformity between the specific minds of all individuals of the same genus.
XIII

The spirits of all kingdoms can introduce themselves into the matter of each kingdom, thus in man the mixture of each kingdom is generated, and this from the very matter of man.
XIV

The volatile spirits of each kingdom spread through the air & flutter throughout everything.
XV

These free & volatile spirits suddenly occupy viscous matter, when they come across it empty or possessed by spirits weaker than themselves.
XVI

Hence it is that in all places there are generations of all kingdoms.
XVII

These volatile spirits also have their subtle body which remains with them in the glutinous & gross body, where they find themselves arrested; & as this gross body has its pores looser than theirs, & consequently the spirits are weaker, they overcome them little by little, determine them to their movement, increase their very magnet, to the point of corrupting all this viscosity, and to extract from it all the substance that suits them, to nourish and vegetate their own body.
XVIII

The volatile spirits of the three kingdoms which flutter throughout everything, and are thus free, come from the corruption of the mixed ones of all the kingdoms; & did not have this freedom from their first birth, but by this resolution.
XIX

Having thus escaped, they remain in the air until they are attracted by mixtures similar to those from which they emerged.
XX

The fixed spirits are contained & preserved in the earth with their fixed body, just like the volatile with their volatile body in the other elements.
XXI

The fixed spirit with its viscous fixed body is often carried into the air, where it encounters a volatile spirit which joins with it, and a new generation arrives, conforming to the nature of the predominant volatile.
XXII

God from the beginning of the world has separated & distinguished volatile spirits from very general fixed matter to preserve or perpetuate all mixed species.
XXIII

True generation occurs through specific magnetism in viscous matter, non-true generation occurs through the mixing of bodies of different nature.
XXIV

The interior and actual virtue of generation is nothing other than the volatile spirit which occupies viscous matter, and arranges it in accordance with the magnetism of its volatile body, from which results the generation of new individual species.
XXV

Fixed matter is a compound of the elements which are assembled in the bosom of the earth
XXVI

The elements join one to the other, & condense successively & by degrees; the air retains & condenses the fire, the water then joins and thickens with the air; finally the earth comes together and becomes intimate with the water.
XXVII

The fixed viscous matter is driven upwards by its internal heat, and by that of the center; immediately it is occupied by the volatile spirits of some kingdom.
XXVIII

The volatile spirits are also composed of the four elements & only differ from each other by the different combination of these elements, according to which one or more elements prevail & dominate over the others.
XXIX

In the mineral spirit, earth and water dominate; in plants, water & air; & in the animal air & fire.
XXX

Life cannot be manifest in the composition where earth & water dominate.
XXXI

Thus metals do not live sensibly, although they are truly generated.


Life lasts all the longer as air and fire are more fixed in matter.
XXXIII

Minerals do not need as much nourishment as other compounds, because water and earth bind air and fire, and thus prevent them from escaping immediately.
XXXIV

Minerals are capable of life, due to the air and fire they contain, although in a much lower degree; & as soon as we can exalt these two elements in them, they can nourish animals very effectively, although in an infinitely small quantity.
XXXV

The viscous matter impregnated with mineral spirits can be extracted from mineral cases by the seven operations.
XXXVI

The volatile spirit is drawn by the first operation into the form of smoke, & is enclosed in the distilled water.
XXXVII

In the second operation this aqueous spirit is lightly cooked with its earth, and from both results a heavy and permanent water, which the Artist uses usefully.
XXXVIII

The volatile spirit, the wind, the dragon, dies & putrefies: but not otherwise than with its brother & sister, that is to say, with the fixed earth, & the distilled water in which it is enclosed.
XXXIX

The viscous earth contains its fixed spirits, and is nourished by the imbibitions of the spirituous substance.
XL

The spirituous substance often escapes violently out of the viscous substance, when it is too rarefied by the air & fire in the bosom of the earth.
XLI

From there come the winds which are later calmed by the rains.
XLII

The fixed and volatile spirit are of the same essence and substance, and only differ in degrees of exaltation and rarefaction.
XLIII

The elixir only becomes penetrating when the volatile spirits are attached to it in large quantities.
XLIV

And this, because the fixed root is very closely linked to a certain excrementous earth which prevents its penetration and fusibility.
XLIV

This earthly excrement cannot rise in the sublimation of the elixir, and prevents the fixed root from sublimating unless a large quantity of the volatile root is used, or very sour vinegar, which is my same thing. .
XLVI

Putrefaction does not occur without the perfect union of the two spirits; & this union does not take place if they do not immediately touch each other, nor this immediate contact without the separation of this excrementous earth.
XLVII

Thus through sublimation, our pure earth becomes very pure & very penetrating; it is also called the fixed root.
XLVIII

When the viscous earth is purified on the outside,
XLIX

The volatile spirit which is contained in water easily penetrates the fixed spirit which is in the earth, because they are of the same nature; and thus the two spirits together take on an aqueous body, and it becomes heavy water.
L

Thus from a subtle substance and from a gross one an average is produced, which art can use, which must be purified by seven distillations.
LI

This medium substance must then be brought by coction to the condition of volatile sulfur, from which immediately afterwards the elixir is made.
LII

There are four putrefactions in the Philosophical work. The first in the first separation, the second in the first conjunction, the third in the second conjunction which is made of heavy water with its salt, the fourth finally in the fixation of sulfur.
LIII

In each of these putrefactions darkness arrives.

CHAPTER III
Of the Solution of Minerals.

Aphorism I

The resolution of all mixtures is done by the same method & the same path of nature which always operates through the action of volatile spirits or original magnetisms on the same very general matter, & which of it - even is not determined to any particular genus or species of natural compound.
II

This very general matter is distinguished and specified by three kinds of spirits which occupy it and determine it with their magnetism, as soon as it comes to rise and sublimate, carried by its spirits out of the bosom of the earth where it took birth.
III

Thus this matter specified at the moment of its birth, is found nowhere without determination & in its universality.
IV

Matter is corrupted in its substance, and resolved in its integral parts, when external spirits more powerful than the internal ones come to encounter this magnet, to drive out the internal spirits, and to establish themselves there in their place; because then the form of the mixed precedent is destroyed.
V

The form of the mixed consists of a certain measure and proportion of spirits, which being lost, the form of the mixed is destroyed, even if the first spirits are not chased away.
VI

Form, to tell the truth, is only a disposition and an arrangement of the parts of matter, which is introduced as much by the celestial spirits as by those of matter itself.
VII

Thus it always has some form in matter, since from its first elementation or creation, it enjoyed magnetism; because one element cannot ally itself with another, without a spirit which creates the union and the magnetism.
VIII

This first composition is all the more perfect & more durable as the spirit which produces it is more subtle & more active, & as the matter it penetrates has finer & more direct pores.
IX

The material principles are successively composed more and more, one with the other; by the mutual alterations of their magnetism, and assemble under the forms produced by the determinations of the spirits whose matter is possessed.
X

Several parts composed in the same way coming into contact do not destroy each other: but on the contrary join and unite by the conformity of their magnetism.
XI

This union is all the stronger as the pores are more direct, finer, better completed, more similar, as their contact is more immediate, and as it responds to a greater extent of surface.
XII

The solution has its degrees, just like the composition, and only arrives in order from the most composed parts to the simplest parts; & this in proportion as the spirit or external magnetism wins and ruins the interior.
XIII

The solution of the mixed is not a resolution to the first matter of all things: but only to the specific or very close matter of the mixed that we want to dissolve, which is none other than the very general matter possessed by the spirits who determine it to the species of the mixed.


The same qualities of the elements are in both fixed and volatile minds of the same kind; there is no other difference than that of proportion, between the degrees of these qualities, the fixed and the volatile.
XV

Spirits are clothed with a similar body in all kingdoms; the fixed ones of fixed salt, and the volatile ones of a smoky substance.
XVI

These bodies differ from each other in the different kingdoms by their elementary qualities. In minerals, earth and water dominate, in plants, air and water; & to the animal air & fire.
XVII

In the mineral kingdom the fixed root is bitter, in vegetables and animals it is salty; the volatile root of the mineral is harsh & acetic; that of the plant and the animal is gentle.
XVIII

Pontic bitterness & harshness or acidity come from the excess of earth, & the lack of air & fire; gentleness comes from an opposite cause.
XIX

The secret of minerals is much more difficult to establish than that of plants or animals, because the lack of air & fire in the former makes their cooking more difficult & slower.
XX

This difficulty is designated by the character given to mercury, which is composed of a half circle, a circle and a cross. In the character of the Moon there is a half circle without a cross, to signify its ease of being transmuted. That of the Sun is a whole circle, to mark the perfection of the metallic mercury it contains.
XXI

Metallic mercury is the only material of all metals, which is capable of the ultimate perfection, at which point it is the physical elixir; & it only differs in all the various metals in that it is more or less pure, & more or less cooked.
XXII

The trouble therefore that we take to convert the bodies of imperfect metals into gold and silver is vain and useless, if we do not separate their mercury on which we would have to work.
XXIII

Mercury is a pure gold, but still raw, which is cooked and matured, as much by its natural heat as by the fire of mining, or that of art.
XXIV

Chemical gold is more perfect than natural gold, because it is purer & more cooked.
XXIV

Natural gold does not penetrate imperfect metallic bodies, because of its coarse density; chymic gold penetrates them through its tenuity.
XXVI

All imperfect metallic bodies are equally coarse, and differ from each other only by their impurity.
XXVII

Impurity comes from lack of cooking; This lack comes from the weakness of volatile spirits, which alone have the power to cook their own material in the mines.
XXVIII

The strength of spirits comes from their abundance; their weakness comes from their small numbers.
XXIX

Spirits digest their own body, and then unite it with fixed matter; thus their magnetism increases little by little,
XXX

Impurities are attached to metals while they are in their mining, more or less to one than to the other, as we notice in fruits which come to maturity.
XXXI

The metal which is outside its mine, and that which is melted no longer rejects its impurities by its internal heat; because it has lost its volatile spirits, and consequently its active, motor & vegetative heat.
XXXII

The fixed spirits which remain in the metal are not sufficient to carry out this separation of impurities; because they are in too small a quantity, and their envelopes are too strong and too thick, to be able to extend beyond the sphere of their magnetism. The external spirits of the great world are also incapable of producing this purification, because they are still too far from the nature of the internal spirits; & more suitable for dissolving the body than for cooking & purifying it.
XXXIII

This is why the metals with which some buildings are covered, and which are always exposed to Heaven, never mature.
XXXIV

But if these metals were put into a mine sufficiently impregnated with metallic spirits, they would be perfected over time.


Then nature would dissolve them into rust or metallic earth; and after having dissolved and rarefied them, it would sooner and more easily be able to perfect them; because all he would have to do is cook them and purify them of their foreign parts; which would perhaps be done within a hundred years.
XXXVI

The only remedy for the imperfections of metals separated from their mineral, is the metallic mineral elixir of Physicists; & this, by the abundance of its spirits, its penetration, its purity, & its fixity.
XXXVII

The purity of the two spirits greatly advances the maturation, both in natural work and in that of art.
XXXVIII

Art through physical operations brings its subject to perfect purity, & not nature.
XXXIX

Neither physical solution nor sublimation can be accomplished in the fixed metallic substance alone, because it does not rise through fire; nor in the volatile part alone, because it is so dry that it cannot be reduced to water by distillation.
XL

But the volatile spirit easily unites with the fixed by means of its vehicle, which is superfluous water.
XLI

Thus the two spirits together are composed into a permanent water, which is the means of uniting the tinctures which are fixed and volatile.
XLII

By this same path nature coagulates the volatile spirit with the fixed; for first it converts them into air; then this air into water by the humidity of the earth; finally it coagulates this water with the viscous power of the earth.


This is why in our first distillation the water comes out before anything else; then follows air in the form of smoke, containing within itself the spirit; & this smoke soon enters the distilled water.
XLIV

This volatile spirit, thus drowned in water, cannot by itself sublimate its metallic earth, because this humidity makes it too fugitive.
XLV

But this spirituous water must convert the metallic earth into water, so that they unite, and the spirit and the water serve as a means of sublimation.
XLVI

In fact, the fixed earth dissolves into water, by sprinkling it several times with spirituous water, and by very light digestions continued until everything becomes ponderous water.
XLVII

Now this ponderous water must be purified by seven distillations; then from this water, immediately with the perfect bodies dissolved in it, metallic sulfur must be produced.
XLVIII

Nature does the same thing in mining; because the metallic spirit is firstly contained in an aerial body, the spirit of the earth converts this air into water; this water encounters a viscous and creamy earth, which it dissolves and which it unites inseparably with itself: finally from this double matter, by mere coction, nature generates metallic sulfur, both white and red.
XLIX

The colors depend only on the degrees of the cooking.
L

The next material of the ponderous water is nothing other than the two roots. Heavy or ponderous water is the next material to sulfur; & sulfur is that of metallic bodies, both in art and in nature.
LI

The purity of water heavy with sulfur and metal depends on the purity of principles, both in art and in nature.
LII

These degrees depend on the coction or the increase of specific magnetism, which repels & separates heterogeneous substances, which prevent the immediate touching of the principles, and consequently the perfect union of the two roots.
LIII

This concoction is done by the heat & the interior fire of the principles.
LIV

The final end and rest from all alteration in minerals is nothing other than solar perfection, that is to say the purity of gold.
LV

Both the fixed and volatile substance of minerals is very dry in nature.
LVI

It can nevertheless be converted into metallic water, and become susceptible to all the changes that art wants to produce in it; because the form of an element can be communicated successively from one to the other by their similar qualities; & that this conversion becomes reciprocal through opposites, both in nature and in art.
LVII

Natural metallic sulfur, before it is reduced to a metallic body, is easy to liquefy, because of the metallic humidity that it contains in abundance, although in this even dryness dominates.
LVIII

When metallic sulfur has become a metallic body, it is very difficult to liquefy, both because of the fixation and because of the coarse impurities.
LIX

Sulfur is called the dryness of metals, and mercury metallic humidity, because of the domination of these qualities.
LX

Sulfur is called water which does not wet the hands; & this because of the abundance of humidity, which is not yet fixed, but only coagulated.
LXI

Physicists have composed this water of everything necessary for their elixir, namely, the two fixed and volatile roots; so that they only need purification & cooking.
LXII

Metallic sulfur is not found in mining alone and separately; but it is still hidden in the mining land.
LXIII

The sparks that we see shining in the mining earth are small metallic bodies produced from sulfur by natural coction.
LXIV

Metallic sulfur is very different from common sulfur, which is commonly sold under this name: thus natural metallic mercury from mercury known by this name.
LXIV

Common mercury allows itself to be altered by metals, and does not alter them; on the contrary, the mercury of Physicists alters metals, and receives no alteration from them.
LXVI

The mercury of the Physicists reincrudes & retrogrades the gold, so that it can no longer be reduced to a body other than with this mercury itself by slow coction.
LXVII

Vulgar mercury is not a metallic principle, but a made metal, although imperfect, and the mercury of the Physicists is a metallic principle, and not a made metal.
LXVIII

In common mercury the aqueous part of the metallic mercury dominates over the metallic dry, which is in small quantity.
LXIX

Metallic sulfur is incombustible; but not the vulgar.
LXX

Both sulfur is a metallic grease: but one is pure and the other impure, and is only the excrement of pure grease.
LXXI

In metallic sulfur the principles of composition are reduced to an equal proportion & conformity of substance; in common sulfur all the elements are still unequal, heterogeneous to one another, & disproportionate; hence it is combustible.
LXXII

Both sulfur is of three kinds, namely mineral, vegetable & animal; & depending on their reign they are called sulfur, gum or fat.
LXXIII

Where there is more food, there is also more sulfur in each type of mixture.
LXXIV

Animal fat is an excrement useful to nature, which, in the absence of other food easier to cook, converts it into nourishing juice, by digesting & purifying it with lymph impregnated with the specific spirits of the animal.
LXXV

Nature alone can make this change, and not art, or at least with great difficulty.
LXXVI

Metal is not the material of physical stone, because it only contains fixed sulfur; nor any excremental mineral, because it contains but little mercury without any pure sulfur.
LXXVII

There is a certain mineral, which contains quantities of pure mercury and pure sulfur, and the preparation of which is not even difficult for a good artist.
LXXVIII

The two fixed & volatile roots draw from this mineral by violent distillation.
LXXIX

We purify these two roots one after the other, and we putrefy them together by slow heat, to dissolve them one by the other.
LXXX

They are then united by circulation to make heavy mineral water, which must be purified by seven distillations.

CHAPTER IV
Of the Distillation of Minerals.

Aphorism I

The Union presupposes that all the other previous operations have been exactly accomplished; because it requires immediate contact between the fixed & volatile roots, & therefore their purity.
II

The elixir is produced by union, and acquires its final perfection by coagulation.
III

Wherever nature encounters a subject suitable for receiving its impressions, it always arranges the roots for union by distillation, and by all the preceding operations.
IV

The active cause in this natural work is none other than the internal heat of the fixed root, of which heat this root is never devoid, as can be seen in the grain of wheat.
V

For the operations of nature, Heaven serves as a capital, a vessel to distill, sublimate & calcine; & the earth serves as a filter to purify the dissolved matter.
VI

Nature dissolves fixed matter by means of underground water.
VII

This solution, entering the sources of the fountains, communicates marvelous virtues to the waters.
VIII

It is not the dissolving water, but the salt which is dissolved by it, which produces these virtues; & it can be separated by distillation.
IX

The salt in these fountains & baths is of several kinds, vitriolic, antimonial, sulfurous, etc.
X

Water which contains vitriol is the best of all, and all the better if its vitriol is pure and fixed.
XI

The virtues of pure vitriol are marvelous; his spirit makes common mercury a kind of panacea, and we can make it by means of it a real medicine against any illness, if we know what vitriol I am talking about, & what mercury.
XII

The substance of pure vitriol corrects the venom of any metal.
XIII

The pure essence of vitriol hardly yields to the radical humidity of gold and silver.
XIV

Baths which contain the only fixed matter of vitriol are the best of all purgative waters.
XV

Those which contain crud vitriol, purge from above and below; those which contain the fixed vitriol without the volatile, cause stools and urine.
XVI

Those which contain the vitriolic fix well united with its volatile, are very cordial.
XVII

There are other thermal waters which are subject to impetuous agitation because of a crust of sulfur which covers them and prevents the escape of volatile spirits.


These spirits coming out in crowds make a noise and a tumult in the air like earthquakes.
XIX

After these tremors, rains usually come.
XX

There are some fountains which convert iron into copper; This happens because vitriol is a rarefied copper, and which abounds in metallic spirits, and these waters contain a lot of vitriol.
XXI

Other fountains turn into stone, because they contain many stony spirits, which, while in the water, always remain dissolved, by the continual access of a new dissolved spirit: but immediately that they are drawn from the fountain, they freeze like corals, which in the sea are soft and harden in the air, & so pearls.
XXII

Other very clear fountains constantly throw out flames, because they contain a lot of very subtle & combustible sulfur, which is the excrement of incombustible metallic sulfur.
XXIII

Other fountains do not emit flames, but light all the combustible and inflammable things that are thrown into them, just as melted saltpeter happens.
XXIV

The incombustible sulfur that these waters contain in abundance prevents the combustible sulfur mixed with it from igniting: but the water penetrates the combustible things that are thrown in, so that it increases their heat and their fat with his own, so that the flame is excited.
XXIV

The cause of these marvelous effects of nature must relate to the volatile spirits, which rise from the earth by a continual movement, which more and more exalts their magnetism, & purifies their little body, until they can, by passing through the pores of the earth, unite intimately with the fixed matter that they encounter there.
XXVI

Thus art perfectly purifies volatile spirits, to unite them with fixed ones, and accomplish the secret.
XXVII

These two purified & united roots are the true matter of gold, which was hidden in the darkness of a very impure mineral.
XXVIII

This mineral before being purified is full of excrement which prevents its transmuting virtue.
XXIX

From a hundred pounds of this mineral, one pound can barely be extracted from the fixed root, and another from the volatile root, only by several extractions.
XXX

The fixed substance after being separated must be purged by solution in common water, filtration & evaporation.
XXXI

It dissolves easily in water, because it is salt in nature; & its terrestrial excrements are not capable of solution, & so they go to the bottom of the water.
XXXII

Then afterward it is calcined again, but lightly; it is dissolved, filtered & evaporated, and the same operations are repeated more than once.
XXXIII

The volatile substance contains a lot of dissolved fixed substance, which over time could overcome & fix the volatile until the perfection of the elixir.
XXXIV

But Artists add some portion of the fixed root, to advance the fixation.
XXXV

The fixed substance contained in the bird is accompanied by its terrestrial excrement which clouds the water.
XXXVI

The spirituous substance also contains aerial & igneous excrements of a sulfur nature, which swim on the distilled water, like combustible oil & grease, or film; after the first distillation, & are divided infinitely at the slightest movement that the water receives; & are separated like atoms by all the water.


In addition, the spirituous substance contains an excrementous phlegm, which smells like fountain water.
XXXVIII

This excremental sulfur which swims on distilled water is combustible, and burns in fact like the sulfur which is found in the mountains, and which is commonly sold.
XXXIX

All these excrements of the spirituous substance must be removed, namely the terrestrial and sulfurous by the filter, and the aqueous by several distillations.
XL

The two roots after these purifications acquire their final & perfect purity by sublimation alone.
XLI

Sublimation cannot be done before all the previous purifications have been carried out, because the body and the spirit cannot unite without being pure.


The sublimated which is called azot, must be cooked until the perfect elixir by an external fire, slow, and continued for a long time.
XLIII

The main cause of the coction is none other than the internal fire of the volatile substance, hence the elixir is called son of fire.

CHAPTER V
Of the Sublimation of Minerals.

Aphorism I

The mineral is more impure than other mixed bodies, because the spirits which rise from the center of the earth join with a greater quantity of terrestrial parts in the composition of the minerals; & that the most subtle spirits which sublimate themselves outside the bosom of the earth, cannot unite with such gross parts, but only with the parts of air & water,
II

These coarser spirituous particles, or which are found involved in larger terrestrial masses, only have a very weak magnetism and a very slow heat; whereas the more subtle spirits which could not be retained in the bowels of the earth have a very lively and very free heat.
III

Minerals are formed in the bosom of the earth from the more earthly composition of these spirits; plants come from the subtlest of minerals, and animals from the subtlest of plants.
IV

The magnetism of mineral spirits which is weak & languishing, while the parts which embarrass them are impure & poorly matched, becomes strong & vigorous in proportion as the excrements are separated by coction, & the parts conform & homogenize.
V

The Chemist in imitation of nature works to elevate and sublimate the volatile sulfur, or the natural heat of its mineral, to strip it of all the impurities which surrounded it, and then join it to a body which is also capable to receive a full concoction.
VI

This art is not acquired through reading alone; experience is necessary.
VII

It takes much more art and industry to carry out sublimation in the mineral kingdom than in the other two kingdoms; because of the abundance of excrement.
VIII

In this operation two errors must be avoided; the first is to assemble the two roots, when they are still impure; the other is to want to purify the earth before having stripped it of all its volatile spirits.
IX

The first error is proven, because the impure roots cannot alter each other, for want of immediately touching each other; & thus the fixed root cannot rise, & the volatile root is not better cooked by all the sublimations that can be made.
X

The reason for the second error is because while the fixed root is not separated from the volatile root, it cannot be cleansed & purged by all the imbibitions of the volatile on the fixed, nor by all the calcinations that we can do.
XI

Sublimation perfectly purifies the roots, & gives the final perfection to any elixir.
XII

Sublimation can only be done after all the previous operations.
XIII

The practice of the elixir in the mineral kingdom is the separation of the roots, the purgation, the solution of the fixed root, made by the volatile in putrefaction or burial; then distillation & sublimation.
XIV

In sublimation the excrement cannot rise, because it cannot bind with the volatile mercury; for they are not of a mercurial nature; nor in the form of salts, but are only an impure & heterogeneous earth.
XV

Now these impure earths after sublimation remain at the bottom of the vessel in the form of a very loose powder which is dissipated by the slightest breath like atoms.
XVI

These terrestrial particles are not linked after sublimation, because they were only joined by means of the fixed fat or fixed root, which alone gives continuity, and makes a mass with the dry earth.
XVII

If then after sublimation there is some mass at the bottom of the vessel; the fixed root is not yet dissolved or altered by the volatile.
XVIII

Then we must reiterate the infusion of the volatile, & the sublimation; as long as everything rises like sheets of talcum powder or shiny silver.
XIX

The separation of the roots, & the sublimation, are crushings & attritions of the stone: but the separation is an imperfect crushing, & the sublimation is a perfect attrition.
XX

The excrements of the stone are all the substances which prevent the natural virtues & actions of Philosophical mercury.
XXI

In sublimation the fat which gives continuity and connection to the excrement, is carried away by several infusions of the volatile on the fixed, by which the fixed comes to bind to the volatile.
XXII

Sublimation is represented in Arifloüs by the enigma of a fish that is roasted, defatted, and filled with its own fat.
XXIII

This fat which makes the continuity of all mixed, leaves the mixed resolved into small atoms when it is removed.
XXIV

Mixed bodies where this fat is more fixed & firm last longer, like metals.
XXV

Our sublimated mineral contains all mineral nature, namely the two roots which are pure and free of all heterogeneity.
XXVI

Thus by the tenuity of its parts, it penetrates all imperfect bodies, by the action of its magnetism it separates all heterogeneous terrestrialities, & by the same very fixed & very pure fire, it cooks & digests pure metallic mercury, the perfection of gold.
XXVII

Nature in mining tends towards the perfection of gold: but it is often prevented from achieving this, both by the cold which condenses too much the material which is the subject of its action so that it cannot separate the impurities which are mixed there, only because these same impurities are there in such a large quantity that they cannot be separated by the weak magnetism of sulfur and natural mercury.
XXVIII

The Artist awakens & strengthens this little mineral fire which was suffocated in the gross body; he strips it of combustible sulfurous impurities, of earthiness incapable of cooking; he cleans & washes the pure body, he gives it a liquor of its nature to drink, & a meat of its substance to eat; he multiplies this spirit & this natural fire by a similar spirit & fire. Finally he assembles and brings together the principles of life of the mineral kingdom, and arrives at the point of fixing the physical stone, which then vivifies every natural mixed body.
XXIX

The stone preserves mixed bodies, because it delays the solution of the elements in them; & consequently the separation of natural fire.
XXX

The stone increases, strengthens, hardens, so to speak, the natural fire; because it is all fire, and very fixed fire.
XXXI

Mixed bodies perish by the resolution or disunity of the elements, which finally happens to them, because their natural fire is very labile; & thus we repair it with a new fire that we draw from food.
XXXII

Living things have more heat than other mixed things; so they consume more through transpiration, which is why they die sooner.
XXXIII

This would not happen if natural heat were more permanent in the substances that nourish us; because the duration of this natural heat would make life less perishable and longer.
XXXIV

We must therefore separate the radical humidity from our mineral, and sublimate it to the perfection of pure natural sulfur; which being acquired, all art is manifested; because what remains to be done is only child's play.

CHAPTER VI
Of the Union of Minerals.

Aphorism I

Chymie draws purity or elixir from all mixtures.
II

The elixir is nothing other than the humid radical composed of the two roots, fixed & volatile, well united & fixed.
III

The fixed root is the matter from which the form of the mixed is drawn, & the subject in which the form resides.
IV

The volatile root is the food which repairs the fixed, when by natural heat it is diminished.
V

The volatile root is the Mercury of the Philosophers, the perpetual fountain, the water with which only the fixed root, sulfur, or gold & the Moon of the Philosophers is useful to the Artist.
VI

The two roots are only one thing in substance.
VII

The fixed root made by the first composition of the elements, and which is common and indifferent to all mixtures, is raised by the central heat, and passes through the pores of the earth as soon as it is born.
VIII

In this sublimation the magnetic spirits which fill the pores of the earth, through which this matter passes, seize it, cook it & convert it into the food & radical humidity of mixed bodies, of which these spirits compose the magnetic sphere.
IX

Thus the Artist cannot withdraw a general specific, but only extract the specific from the mixture he treats.
X

Each elixir contains all the virtue of its mixture, because it contains all the pure natural substance of this mixture.
XI

These terms & expressions are synonymous, elixir, secret, mercury of life, composition of elements, raw material, double spirit, ruby, foundation & material base of all nature, Saturn which devours its children & c.
XII

Mineral nature is itself very subtle, very penetrating, and entirely invisible; nevertheless it produces very solid things, such as gold, silver, diamonds, etc.
XIII

The mineral nature is alcohol, that is to say, the most subtle part of the elements, very fixed & very digestible by an astral & invisible fire.
XIV

Hence it comes that in its extraction it always follows the most subtle part of the mixed, and mixes with the mercurial smoke; so that it flees from the coarse parts, and is very difficult to retain.
XV

We call subtle & penetrating everything that the heat & the nature of the mixture retains in its resolution; but gross & dirty everything it rejects as heterogeneous.
XVI

Hardness suits both the gross and the subtle.
XVII

Because pure elementary nature can be coagulated & condensed into very hard substances, such as gold & silver, both chemical and natural, & precious stones.
XVIII

We call impure & gross any body whose subtle & homogeneous parts are mixed with gross & heterogeneous substances.
XIX

Things that are heterogeneous in the mixed cause their virtues to languish.
XX

The mineral spirit coming into contact with mineral water in a pure & clean place, & uniting with it, produces a mineral proportioned to the qualities of this water: thus the metallic spirit with metallic water produces the metal, & the stony spirit with stony water produces stones.
XXI

In truth, water contains in itself spirits too weak to coagulate and harden it, because they are too dissolved, and the quantity of fixed matter that it received in its formation is too small and too extensive in its formation. the fluid, to be able to overcome it: but as soon as this mineral water comes to join with the fixed spirits of the same nature as those it possesses within it; they compose & accomplish the entire cause of coagulation & hardness.
XXII

The Artist, after having resolved the stones, produces new ones from the essence of the first ones: but he makes them infinitely purer & more powerful with the very roots of the first ones which he has purified, after having decomposed them.
XXIII

But the false artificial precious stones are nothing other than a fixed excrementous terrestrial substance, changed into glass by a strong fusion, by which the volatile part has entirely escaped, and the greater part of the fixed salts at the same time as the spirits.
XXIV

Thus these sophisticated stones do not have the virtues & properties of the stones from which they were taken by resolution; because they do not contain its entire and perfect nature, although they shine like the natural ones.
XXV

The sophistic stone retains the color and purity of the natural stone from which it is drawn by resolution; because the terrestrial excrement which makes up this artificial stone,
XXVI

Thus the chymic Sophist can extract emerald from copper & iron; the ruby ​​of lead, the diamond of tin & silver.
XXVII

The secret of precious stones, which is composed of three pure principles, is more precious than all true & natural precious stones.
XXVIII

The secret of precious stones changes all glass into real & natural precious stones.
XXIX

The same arcane has the virtue of making glass ductile & malleable like metal, it has the same effect on other kinds of stone.
XXX

Glass & stones are brittle, due to lack of smooth moisture.
XXXI

If the unctuous humidity were abundant in the stones, it would hold the terrestrial parts so glued together that they could not separate from each other for whatever bruise we made.
XXXII

The secret of glass increases the unctuous humidity of glass & stones, by that with which it is composed & filled, which is of a nature to be able to penetrate & mingle exactly in the projection on these fixed & brittle substances.
XXXIII

The creamy humidity of glass, stones and metals does not differ from nature in substance.
XXXIV

There is only one matter in the world from which and in which all alterations and generations take place through the education of forms.



XXXVI

This could not be done if there were not in all the composites the same center & material foundation, from which the form of each composite can be drawn.
XXXVII

This matter receives various forms by the action of the volatile spirit which occupies it and prepares it for the form, following the determination of the magnetism which is imprinted on it.
XXXVIII

Thus this viscous matter is divided into three kingdoms by three kinds of spirits which possess the energy of the elements.
XXXIX

Metallic bodies do not live, because their radical humidity is not capable of intrinsic movement.
XL

This interior movement is absolutely necessary for life, and is only suitable for the living.
XLII

The perfection of life cannot be derived from any other radical humidity than that in which air & fire dominate over earth & water.
XLII

Heaven derives its movement, not from its intrinsic nature, but from the Angels, according to the opinion of some Philosophers; or of the volatile spirit of the world, according to others; & thus he has no life.
XLIII

This volatile spirit of the world which is perceptible to us by the light it excites, is very pure in the Sun and the stars: it is alive, and even the principle of life of all animated compounds; it is the origin of all visible and invisible magnetism of sublunary bodies.
XLIV

This ethereal spirit is nevertheless matter & body; but he has within him a principle of life and action, which comes immediately from the power of the supreme being; & this principle cannot become noticeably material, although it is the first cause of visible movement in matter.
XLV

This prince superior to all matter in the visible world fills the entire Universe; but determines the spirit of the world more particularly than the less simple & grosser substances, which result from the interferences of the spirit of the world, with the grosser elements, such as water, air & fire.
XLVI

The earth is composed of air & water, the air is composed of water & fire; fire is the spirit of the world animated by the first spirit, by which the wisdom of God pronounced the creation of the Universe, & in which the Majesty of the Almighty established his Throne to manifest himself in his Works.
XLVII

It is with the seal of this spirit that our soul is marked; & it is perhaps at this degree that the nature of the Angels subsists.
XLVIII

Thus the spirit of God arranges all the arrangements of the Universe, and its unity spreads throughout all the numbers of nature; it is from this point that all the lines of the world are produced, which reveal to us the immensity of the indivisible whole.
XLIX

In stones and metals is contained more or less abundantly the unctuous substance which can be converted as food into the unctuous humidity of the other kingdoms, although in itself it is incapable of life.
L

This unctuous mixed substance is nothing other than fixed and sweet salt.
LI

The volatile spirits of plants and animals, which are nourished by it, penetrate this mineral matter, and increase in it the aerial and igneous spirits; so that it prevails over terrestrial and aqueous spirits of this matter which thus receives the perfection of life.
LII

Each elixir abounds in fixed radical moisture, by which it easily increases and perfects its similar, which it finds in the plant and the animal to which it serves as food.
III

And because this humidity is the only proper foundation of the spirits of life, it retains and nourishes them in such a way that they are fully sufficient for the magnetism of life.
LIV

This humidity excited by the volatile spirits of the plant and the animal that it nourishes, spreads life in all parts of the organic body, and overcomes all the foreign magnetisms which had been introduced there, and which disposed the body to corruption & death.
LV

This radical humidity is easily impregnated & excited by these spirits, because it is their own & natural magnet, so that they grasp & penetrate it easily & quickly.
LVI

The practice of minerals is the separation of the two roots, their purification, the first conjunction, the sublimation, the second union, & fixation.
LVII

A single operation continued and often repeated, containing the distillation of the volatile and the Calcination of the fixed, strips the fixed of all volatile spirits, and frees it at the same time from all earthly excrement; & this operation is the first of the seven, namely, calcination.

CHAPTER VII
Of the Coagulation of Minerals.

Aphorism I

The coagulation & fixation of the firm & compact union of the two roots.
II

The chymic union which is the perfect one, can only be accomplished before the natural union which is always imperfect, is not dissolved.
III

If the solution is made by heterogeneous spirits stronger than the natural ones, the mixed is destroyed, and a new mixed is generated according to the nature of the dissolving spirits.
IV

This new mixture also has its particular energies; because nature never generates without giving.
V

Thus to make the elixir specific to the mixture that one is treating, one must operate with discernment and judgment, and make the solution using the mixture's own minds.
VI

To carry out coagulation it is absolutely necessary that the two roots are pure.
VII

You must have a large quantity of the volatile root to do the solutions and multiplications.
VIII

The purity of the two roots is known by taste, touch & smell.
IX

The volatile mineral liquor is very harsh and biting; sweet, subtle, limpid, glutinous & very heavy.
X

The mineral fixed root does not disturb its water in any way when it is dissolved in it, & it resolves like a glu or erase little by little, & without any noise; & the solution is very heavy.
Xi

_ the solution of sulfur in this same water, and by coction alone.
XII

In the union it is necessary to use a greater quantity of the volatile root than of the fixed, in order to overcome the compaction and dryness of the fixed root: a quality that it acquired through sublimation.
XIII

For if action and passion did not occur between the two roots, blackness and putrefaction would not take place, and consequently neither union nor fixation.
XIV

Humidity or spirituous water imprints and communicates its movement to dryness; it penetrates all its parts, separates them, and the magnetism of the humid compound approaches that of the dry; thus between one and the other there is action and passion.
XV

The volatile must be used in such quantity and weight that it cannot destroy the generative or coagulative virtue of the fixed.
XVI

Chemical Physicists have used various weights; because sufficient weight does not consist of an indivisible point, and the generative virtue is preserved in several proportions, as we see happening in the generation of animals.
XVII

This range of proportion is from three weights of the volatile, against one of the fixed up to ten, and even twelve.
XVIII

Coction & coagulation takes place all the sooner the less volatile we use, because it is raw, and can only coagulate over time.
XIX

The means of advancing coagulation depends not only on the weight, but also on the perfection of the volatile mercury.
XX

Perfect volatile mercury is the physical tincture extracted from gold, or from nature sulfur, brought to redness by the action of fire.
XXI

This tincture is drawn by the solution of sulfur in at least three weights of its water; & this done, the water is impregnated with mercury or blood of the Sun.
XXII

If we digest this tincture over a very slow & continuous fire of physical athanor, the whole secret will be done in two months.
XXIII

The main cause of this advancement is nothing other than our Sun which cooks the raw parts of the water, because it itself is well cooked.
XXIV

Until this water is fixed, it always remains useless for transmutation, because it escapes and flies away in the projection, and it carries with itself the mineral spirits of the way.
XXV

These mineral spirits are those which give perfection to the imperfect.
XXVI

This water, without being impregnated, would nevertheless achieve fixation over time, because it also contains mineral spirits; which, although they are greatly dissolved by water, can nevertheless subsequently overcome their conqueror.
XXVII

For these are only the spirits of fixed salt dissolved in water, which dissolution takes place within the earth by the water which is joined to the fixed salt, and which is increased by the air,
XXVIII

How long could mineral water be fixed by cooking alone, without the tincture of perfect sulfur? This is a very uncertain thing: but perhaps it would be fixed in ten years, since each weight of the fixed coagulates ten weights of water in a year.
XXIX

Perhaps also in less time this water would be fixed, since nature without art coagulates its volatile mercury every year into the perfection of plant, animal, and mineral.
XXX

For the mercury of the world which rises from the bosom of the earth is no less volatile than the spirit of the salt which is contained in our water, since it is perfectly dissolved in this water, and it also studies with her.
XXXI

In addition, there are animals, metals and stones generated in the air, where the fixed cannot rise.
XXXII

All these generations take place through the action of particular spirits which occupy the mercury of the world when it is carried into the air.
XXXIII

Our water coagulates very late, if it is not impregnated; but this slowness does not come from pure mercury, or from the salt contained in the water, but from the superfluous water which art cannot separate.
XXXIV

The cause of superfluous water comes from the fact that the fixed mercurial substance which is in the earth, and which by its nature is very dry, eagerly attracts to itself a similar mercury which is contained in the air, of which it cannot grow ; & thus it attracts a lot of air, & this air is changed into water, which the Artist cannot then separate entirely.
XXXV

This superfluous moisture is consumed little by little by the intrinsic heat of the mercurial water, with the help of a continual coction, made by a very slow external heat.
XXXVI

This consumption of superfluous water occurs rather if some part of the fixed root is added, because it is drier and warmer.

CHAPTER VIII
Of the Multiplication of Elixirs.

Multiplication is nothing other than the increase of the body and its virtue, by giving it a new concoction, and therefore reiterating all previous operations.
II

Thus to multiply the elixir it is necessary to dissolve it in raw water to reincrude it, the roots must be further separated, distilled & sublimated, to give them more subtlety & penetration.
III

Multiplication is always done all the more quickly the more often it is repeated; because the igneous spirits which complete and perfect the work, are always increased by the addition of the volatile, both in quantity and in virtue.
IV

The practice of multiplication consists of dissolving the elixir in its mercurial water by putrefaction, of purifying by light distillations and sublimations, of making the union, of digesting lightly until dryness and whiteness, and of continuing the concoction until 'to the redness of ruby.
V

Thus the elixir acquires a thousand times more virtue than it had and always mixes with each repetition, until infinity.
VI

Likewise the red & fixed animal elixir must be dissolved by its animal spirit.
VII

The animal spirit which must dissolve it is none other than the flower of salt dissolved in clear water by putrefaction.
VIII

The support which makes the form subsist is nothing other than the radical humidity; & the instrument that the form uses to produce its actions is none other than natural heat.
IX

From which it follows that the excellence of the form depends on the radical humidity, and that the excellence of its actions depends on natural heat.
X

Consequently the excellence both of the form and of its actions, is changed by the alterations of radical humidity and natural heat.
XI

The radical humidity and consequently the natural heat, receives changes by the different magnetisms of the elementary parts, both internal and external, when by the power of their action they come to disturb the harmony which preserves the nature of the mixed.
XII

The various impressions of the external elements disturb by their bad weather the temperament of the humid radical, and destroy his actions: the internal elementary parts become discordant, if one of them comes to prevail over the others.
XIII

One of the elementary magnetisms prevails over the others, as soon as the quintessence where the magnetic spirit of the mixed escapes through the action of external causes.
XIV

The combat of the elementary magnetisms, or of the internal qualities of the humid radical, continues until a new quintessence arrives, or a new spirit results from this movement, which reduces all the discordant parts to a magnetism uniform, & produces a new mixture.
XV

Because the parts of composition, different in elementary qualities, only agree with each other by means of the quintessence which subjects them all to a common magnetism, and constitutes the present character of the mixture as long as it can be preserved there. .
XVI

Quintessence, specific magnetism, the link, the seed of the elements, the composition of the pure elements, are synonymous expressions of the same thing, of the same matter or subject, in which the form resides; it is a material essence in which the celestial spirit is closed and operates.
XVII

All the more pure this bond, the more free and vigorous the form, and consequently the stronger its actions.
XVIII

Impurity alters the temperament, & is the subject of an intemperament whose actions are contrary to form & temperament.
XIX

From which it follows that temperament and distemperament fight against it and weaken each other, and that thus the actions of the form are altered.
XX

Thus the actions of the gross & impure mixed are weaker; & those of the pure are stronger & more noble.
XXI

From which it also follows that elixirs or chymic stones are nobler & more energetic than the natural mixtures from which they are taken; & this because the first are made very pure, very simple, very subtle, full of spirits & natural warmth.
XXII

All these perfections take their increase in the chymic elixirs with each multiplication; from which we infer that activity has no limit in its increase.

END