THE LIGHT DRAWN FROM CHAOS,
Or
HERMETIC SCIENCE

of the Unveiled Philosophical Great Work.

By Mr. Louis GRASSOT.

IN AMSTERDAM.

Mr. DCC. LXXXIV.

PREFACE

Philosophy was born with the World, because men have always thought, reflected, meditated to find the means to live in Society; but the preservation of his own being was not a less interesting object, & could one think that he forgot himself to concern himself only with what was around him; subject to so many vicissitudes, faced with so many ills, made moreover to enjoy everything that surrounds him, he has undoubtedly sought the means of preventing or curing his illnesses in order to preserve for longer a life always ready to escape him. It was therefore necessary to reason about the Beings of the Universe & meditate for a long time to discover this fruit of life & this source of wealth, capable of leading man almost to immortality; which is not ambiguous, given that nowadays there exists a man named Monsieur de Saint Germain, one of the most famous Adepts of the Century, who by this precious treasure which he possesses, aged over four hundred years, is still very able & lives free from all the infirmities that old age causes, & enjoys fortune at his pleasure: secondly that it was announced in the Encyclopedic Journal of Bouillon, on the first of February one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three, a fact which happened in England in the subject of the transmutation of metals, by means of the Powder of Projection which comes in support of this Work. This fact cannot be doubted, since it happened in the presence of the Respectable Magistrates & Witnesses of the Place above seduction, who affirm the true operation. who by this precious treasure which he possesses, more than four hundred years old, is still very able & lives free from all the infirmities that old age causes, & enjoys fortune at his pleasure: secondly that it was announced in the Encyclopedic Journal of Bouillon, on the first of February seventeen eighty-three, a fact which happened in England concerning the transmutation of metals, by means of the Powder of Projection which comes in support of this Book rage.

This fact cannot be doubted, since it happened in the presence of the Respectable Magistrates & Witnesses of the Place above seduction, who affirm the true operation. who by this precious treasure which he possesses, more than four hundred years old, is still very able & lives free from all the infirmities that old age causes, & enjoys fortune at his pleasure: secondly that it was announced in the Encyclopedic Journal of Bouillon, on the first of February seventeen eighty-three, a fact which happened in England concerning the transmutation of metals, by means of the Powder of Projection which comes in support of this Book rage. This fact cannot be doubted, since it happened in the presence of the Respectable Magistrates & Witnesses of the Place above seduction, who affirm the true operation. & enjoys fortune at will: secondly that it was announced in the Journal Encyclopédique de Bouillon, on the first of February one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three, a fact which happened in England concerning the transmutation of metals, by means of the Powder of Projection which comes in support of this Book. This fact cannot be doubted, since it happened in the presence of the Respectable Magistrates & Witnesses of the Place above seduction, who affirm the true operation. & enjoys fortune at will: secondly that it was announced in the Journal Encyclopédique de Bouillon, on the first of February one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three, a fact which happened in England concerning the transmutation of metals, by means of the Powder of Projection which comes in support of this Book. This fact cannot be doubted, since it happened in the presence of the Respectable Magistrates & Witnesses of the Place above seduction, who affirm the true operation.

The discovery of such a treasure is not new, but it always remained enclosed in a very narrow circle of persons, who thinking that God, not having given this knowledge to all men, did not want it to be divulged, which caused those who possessed it, to share it only with a few friends, also Hermes, Trismegistus, or three times the first of all the Philosophers known with distinction, he only communicated it to elite people. , whose prudence and discretion he had experienced, and they shared it with others of the same stamp .

But how can we communicate these admirable secrets from age to age and at the same time keep them hidden from the public? to do so by oral tradition would have been to risk abolishing even memory, memory is too fragile a piece of furniture to be trusted, and traditions of this kind become obscured as they move away from their source, to the point that it is impossible to disentangle the dark chaos which buries them. There was therefore no other resource than that of hieroglyphs, symbols, allegories, fables & others, which being susceptible to several different explanations, could serve to deceive, & to instruct some while others remained in ignorance, this is the decision that Hermes took, & after him all the Hermetic Philosophers did the same, served as a veil for their philosophy. But it is time for the veil to be torn, and for the Light to come out of Chaos, to show itself in all its brilliance, and for Harpocrates to break the silence, for it is a theft, I dare say, that man commits to society when he hides from it the discoveries he has been able to make, which tend to his happiness and general preservation .

I hope that those who are concerned with this Science will be grateful to me for the pains I have taken to bring together in this little Work, as intelligibly as possible, all the operation of the great Philosophical Work, access to which had been made impracticable by the allegorical envelopes, perhaps I will not have the approval of these vast, sublime and penetrating geniuses, who embrace everything, who know everything without having ever learned anything, who dispute everything & decide the same without knowledge of the facts; thus it is not to such people that one gives lessons: to them properly belongs the name of Sage, much better than to Democritus, Plato, Pythagoras and other Greeks, who were in Egypt to breathe the hermetic air, & to draw from it the Science that this Book deals with; when we lack light on a fact difficult to believe, for the sole reason that it is rare & extraordinary, it is prudent to remember this verse from Lucretius:And if not potuit ratio dissolvere causam: verum est .

The first to whom it came to the idea of ​​hovering in the air, when he put forward the subject, they laughed in his face, & they called him mad & insane; this did not prevent several from seeking the means without being able to succeed, so it was said that the thing was impossible; but nevertheless nowadays we see with great satisfaction that Mr. de Montgolfier has succeeded in his enterprise, which therefore proves to us that everything that presents itself to the mind of man is possible, and that everything depends on finding the means to arrive at our goal by working on true principles.

But even though the incredulous and the accused take the trouble to follow step by step the route that I am tracing for them, they will see to their great astonishment the truth banish from their minds the distrust and fear that may have been caused by a heap of attempts that numbers of blowers and coal burners have made without success, working on imperfect clues and without knowledge of the Primitive Matter, without which nothing can be done and nothing must be undertaken, since it is the basis fundamental & general of the Philosophical Work.
Moreover, I beg the Reader to be very persuaded that I have no other interest, nor other view than to manifest the truth to those who aspire to its knowledge, & I desire with all my heart that those who are unfortunate enough to waste their time working on foreign or remote matters, find themselves sufficiently enlightened by the reading of this Book, to know the true & unique Matter of the Philosophers ; & that those who already know it, but who ignore the great point of the solution of the stone & the conciliation of the water & the spirit of the body, which is the term of universal medicine, can learn here these secret operations, which are described there quite distinctly.

THE LIGHT DRAWN FROM CHAOS,
Or
HERMETIC SCIENCE
of the Great Philosophical Work , by which our ancient Sages procured the source of Wealth and Health.

KEY TO NATURE

From all material things ashes are made, from ashes we make salt, from salt we separate water & mercury, from mercury we compose an elixir or a quintessence, the body turns into ashes to be cleaned of its combustible parts, into salt to be separated from these earthly things, into water to rot & putrefy, & into spirit to become quintessence.

Salts are therefore the keys to art and nature, without their knowledge it is impossible to imitate it in its operations; it is necessary to know their sympathy and their antipathy with the metals and with themselves; there is properly only one salt in nature, but it is divided into three kinds to form the principles of bodies, these three are nitre, tartar & vitriol, all the others are composed of them.

Sublimation, descension & coction, are three ways of operating that nature employs to perfect its works, by the first it evacuates the superfluous humidity which would suffocate the fire & prevent its action in the earth its matrix.

By descending it restores to the earth the humidity of which plants or heat have deprived it. Sublimation is done by the elevation of vapors in the air where they condense into clouds: the second is done by rain, and rain in fine weather alternately; a continual rain would flood everything, a perpetual fine weather would dry out everything. The rain falls drop by drop, because poured too abundantly it would ruin everything, like a gardener who waters his seeds with a full bucket; it is thus that nature operates & distributes these benefits with weight, measure & proportion.

The coction is a digestion of the raw humor instilled into the bosom of the earth, a maturation & conversion of this humor into food by means of its secret fire: these three operations are so linked together that the end of one is the beginning of the other.

The object of sublimation is to convert a heavy thing into a light one, an exhalation into vapors, to attenuate the filthy and impure body, and to strip it of its faeces, to make these vapors take on the virtues and properties of higher things, and finally to rid the earth of a superfluous humor which would prevent its productions .

As soon as these vapors are sublimated, they condense into rain, and from spirituous and invisible that they were, they become a moment later a dense and aqueous body, to fall back on the earth and imbibe it with the celestial nectar, with which it has been impregnated during its stay in the air, as soon as the earth has received it, nature works to digest it and cook it.

Water contains a ferment, an invigorating spirit which flows from the higher natures onto the lower ones which it has impregnated while wandering through the air, and which it then deposits in the bosom of the earth. This ferment is a seed of life, without which man, animals and plants, would not live and engender, everything breathes it in nature, and man does not live on bread alone, but on this aerial spirit which he constantly inhales.

Only God and nature, his Minister, know how to make material elements obey, principles of bodies, art cannot achieve this, but the three which result from it become perceptible in the resolution of the mixtures. Chemists call them sulphur, salt & mercury; these are the principled elements; mercury is formed by the mixture of water and earth; sulphur, from earth and air; condensed salt, air & water. The fire of nature joins it as a formal principle. Mercury is composed of a greasy, viscous earth & limpid water, the sulfur of a very dry & very subtle earth, mixed with the humidity of the air; finally the salt of a filthy water, pontic & of a raw air which is embarrassed there. See Becher's Underground Physics ,

Nature is very simple in its operations, so therefore one must imitate it if one wishes to succeed in its undertakings; it has only one principle, and there is also only one fixed spirit, composed of a very pure and incombustible fire which makes its home in the radical humidity of the mixtures: it is more perfect in gold than in all other things, and the only mercury of the Philosophers has the property and the virtue of drawing it out of its prison, of corrupting it and of disposing it for generation; quicksilver is the principle of volatility, malleability & minerality, the fixed spirit of gold can do nothing without it, gold is moistened, reincrusted, volatilized & subjected to putrefaction by the operation of mercury, & this is digested, cooked, thickened,

One and the other are mercury and philosophical sulphur, this sulfur is the soul of bodies, and the principle of the exuberance of their tincture, vulgar mercury is deprived of it, vulgar gold and silver have it only for themselves. The mercury proper to the work must therefore first be impregnated with an invisible sulphur, so that it is more disposed to receive the visible tincture of the perfect bodies, and so that it can then communicate it with wear.

Many chemists sweat blood and water to extract the tincture from vulgar gold, they imagine that by dint of giving it torture, they will make it disgorge it & that then they will find the secret of increasing it & multiplying it, but... spes tandem Agricolas vanis eludit Aristis ; for it is impossible that the solar tincture can be entirely separated from its body, art cannot undo in this genus what nature has united so well, and if they succeed in extracting from gold a colored and permanent liquor by the force of fire or by the corrosion of strong waters, it must be regarded only as a portion of the body, but not as its tincture; for what properly constitutes tincture cannot be separated from gold.

OF PRIMITIVE MATTER

which alone should be used to make Projection Powder .

The source of health and wealth, two bases on which rests the happiness of this life, are the object of this art which has always been a mystery; and those who have dealt with it have always spoken of it as a science whose practice has something surprising about it, and whose result is miraculous in itself and in its effects .

Despite all the information that can be given to lead to the knowledge of Primitive Matter, the great Architect of the Universe, author of Nature, whom the Philosopher proposes to imitate, can alone enlighten and guide the human mind in the search for this inestimable treasure as well as in the operation of this art; so therefore if you wish to succeed, seek in his name & you will find a matter daughter of the Sun & of the Moon, which contains within it the four Elements, as well as the three kingdoms of Nature by which all exists. This material has no determined shape except that it is flat, green, membranous, gelatinous, without root or branch, in a word, its shape & its way of being born, as well as its essence, gives it the name of Spermaterre ,Nostoc; indeed it resembles a green sperm which is spread over the earth in larger or smaller parcels.

It is found in land that is not cultivated & a little humid & mossy, & more abundantly along paths & stony & sandy places, & near mountains; in a word, it is everywhere. It must be collected before sunrise, in the seasons of Spring, from March 21 to April 21, & Autumn, from September 21 to October 21, the one that is collected in Spring is the female, & the one in Autumn is the male; you have to pick up the greenest one; of course that you will implement each season the quantity that you have picked up. I must tell you that the essence of this matter is held in the air with the celestial body, having the male & female gender, a firm & strong, fixed & permanent virtue, & that it is carried by the air in the bosom of the earth which serves as its matrix, to then corporify, that the Sun & the Moon give birth to by their fecundity; which causes it to be named, by the Hermetic Philosophers,Daughter of the Sun & the Moon ; this name belonged to her more willingly than all the others which had been given to her only to hide her and conceal her from the eyes of the vulgar. It is therefore necessary, before undertaking anything, to know this nature, the pure and the impure, the world and the filthy there because nothing in Nature can give what it does not possess; & this is why things are & can only be according to their nature & that of their principle.

Take then the part closest to it and the most perfect, and it will be enough for you; leave the mixed & only take the simple, because that is where the quintessence is, & by this means you will make the medicine that some call quintessence; which is a principle that cannot perish, permanent & always victorious. It is a brilliant light, which truly enlightens every soul that has once known it, it is here the knot & the link of all the elements, which contains within itself the spirit which nourishes things, by means of which nature acts in the Universe: it is this gushing fountain, the beginning & the end of all operations. I therefore advise you to reject any other thing as useless, and to attach yourself only to this water which burns, whitens, dissolves & coagulates, which purifies & fertilizes, & do not apply yourself to anything other than giving your matter the necessary cooking, without being put off by the length of time, otherwise you will do nothing.

Observe that the terms used for dissolving, calcining, tinting, whitening, refreshing, watering, desiccating, coagulating, imbibing, cooking, fixing, moistening, distilling, all mean the same thing, which is to cook nature until she is perfect; note again that pulling out the soul, the spirit or the body, means nothing other than the aforesaid calcinations, which are the operations of Venus, with the fire necessary for the extraction of the soul from the spirit.

KEY TO THE WORK

First Operation.

To manage to obtain the Mercury & the philosophical Elixir, it is therefore necessary to reject any other matter & to take only the venerable matter of the Philosophers, which contains in it all that is necessary to come to the end of your desires, & after having freed it from its heterogeneous parts in rain or fountain water, you will also free it from its foreign humidity between two cloths, & you will put it in a vessel the glass which is of a round or oval shape, & that it has a neck of the length of a palm, but narrow as that of a bottle; the glass must be equally thick in all its parts, without knots or fibres, in order to resist; & you will close hermetically well, & luter the seal of seals, observe that all your operation must be done in this same vessel,

You will therefore put this vessel in the earth, so that your matter can ferment there enough to dissolve, calcine, dye, whiten, water, dry out & redden, finally cook enough to give you this Powder of Projection which will make you happy, & will compensate you for your pains. It is thus necessary for this effect to make a hollow in a cellar, of the circumference of your vessel, & introduce it to him so that the belly is half in ground, & you will raise around two hemispheres in the form of hollow of oak cut by the medium; you will leave it in this furnace of nature for seven months, to obtain the white powder, with which you will transmute the metals into silver, and for the red powder, you will leave it for five more months; what makes a year to get the Red Powder,

As there are lands which by their nature are more or less hot, if it happened that at the end of the said time your material was not at its degree of perfection, you would leave your vessel longer, so that it could reach it, and the Artist by his industry could compensate for this lack of heat, but with great & wise precaution.

OPERATION THAT THE

Material made during the time of its fermentation.

The preparation is composed of four parts, the first is the solution of matter in mercurial water; the second, is the preparation of the mercury of the Philosophers, the third, is the corruption, the fourth, the generation & the creation of the philosophical sulphur. The first is through the mineral seed of the earth; the second volatilizes & spermatizes the bodies, the third makes the separation of the substances & their rectification; the fourth unites them & fixes them, which is the creation of the Stone.

The Philosophers have compared the preparation to the Creation of the World, which was at first a mass, a chaos, an empty, formless & dark earth, which was nothing in particular, but everything in general; of strong that by the first digestion the body dissolves, the conjunction of the male & the female, & the mixture of their seed takes place, putrefaction succeeds, & the elements are resolved into a homogeneous water. The Sun & the Moon eclipse at the head of the Dragon, & everyone finally returns & reenters the ancient chaos, & the dark abyss. This first digestion takes place like that of the stomach, by a weak, peptic heat, more suited to corruption than to generation.

In the second digestion, the spirit of God is carried on the waters, the light begins to appear, and the waters separate from the waters; the Moon & the Sun reappear, the elements emerge from the chaos to constitute a new world, a new sky & a new earth: the little Ravens change their feathers, & become Doves; the Eagle & the Lion unite by an indissoluble link.

This regeneration is done by the igneous spirit, which descends in the form of water to wash away the matter of its original sin, and bring there the aurific seed, for the water of the Philosophers is a fire, but give your attention so that the separation of the waters is done by weight and measure, lest those which are under the sky flood the earth; or that rising in too large quantities, they leave the earth too dry and too arid.

The third digestion furnishes the nascent earth with a warm milk, and infuses into it all the spiritual virtues of a quintessence which links the soul with the body by means of the spirit. The earth then hides a great treasure in its bosom, and first becomes like the Moon, then the Sun; pay attention that in the Hermetic Philosophy, the Moon signifies silver & the Sun gold; the first is therefore called Earth of the Moon , & the second Earth of the Sun , & were born to be linked by an indissoluble marriage; for one and the other no longer fear the attacks of fire.

The fourth digestion completes all the mysteries of the world, the earth becomes by its means a precious ferment, which ferments everything into perfect bodies, as leaven changes all dough into its nature; she had acquired this property by becoming celestial quintessence. Its virtue, emanating from the universal spirit of the world, is a panacea or universal medicine for all diseases of creatures which can be cured. The secret furnace of the Philosophers, in which you will ferment your matter, will give you this miracle of art and nature, by repeating the operations of the first work,

The whole Philosophical process consists in the solution of the body & the congealing of the spirit, & everything is done by the same operation. The fixed & the volatile mingle intimately but this cannot be done if the fixed is not previously volatility; one and the other finally embrace each other, and by the reduction they become absolutely fixed.

By this means the superfluities of the stone are converted into a true essence; because he who claims to separate something from our subject, knows nothing in philosophy, since all that is superfluous, filthy, starchy, & finally all the substance of the compound is perfected by the action of our secret fire.

This advice should open the eyes of those who, in order to carry out an exact purification of the elements and the principles, persuade themselves that it is necessary to take only the subtle, and to reject the thick, because they do not know that the fire and the sulfur are hidden in the center of the earth, and that it must be washed exactly with one's spirit to extract from it the balm, the fixed salt, which is the blood of our stone; here is the essential mystery of this operation, which is accomplished only after a suitable digestion, and a slow distillation.

The operative principles, which are also called the keys of the work or the regime, are four in number; the first is solution or liquefaction; the second, ablution; the third, reduction & the fourth, fixation; by the solution the bodies return to their first matter, and are reincrusted by coction; then the marriage takes place between the male and the female, and the crow is born. The stone is resolved into four elements confused together, the sky & the earth unite to bring Saturn into the world. Ablution teaches how to whiten the crow, and to bring Jupiter from Saturn; this is done by the change of body into spirit. The function of reduction is to restore to the body its spirit which volatilization had taken from it, and then to nourish it with a spiritual milk in the form of dew,
During these last two Operations, the dragon descended from the sky becomes furious against itself, it devours its tail & is swallowed up little by little until finally it metamorphoses into stone.

Such was the dragon of which Homer speaks; he is the true image or the true symbol of these two operations. While we were assembled under a beautiful Plane, said Ulysses to the Greeks, & while we were there to make the Hecatombs, near a fountain which issued from this tree, a marvelous prodigy appeared: a horrible dragon whose back was spotted, sent by Jupiter himself, came out from the bottom of the Altar & ran to the plane tree. At the top of this tree were eight little sparrows with their mother who hovered around them, the dragon seized them with fury & even the mother, who was mourning the loss of her young. After this action the same God who had sent him, made him beautiful, brilliant & changed him into a stone in our given eyes. I leave it to the enlightened Reader to apply it.

SIGNS OR PRINCIPLES

Demonstratives.

The colors which occur to the philosophical Matter during the course of the operations of the work, are the black, the white & the red, they follow one another immediately & by order. The beginning of darkness proves that the fire of nature begins to operate, and that matter is sent out of solution. When this black color is perfect, so is the solution, and the elements are confused, the grain rots to be ready for generation. He who does not blacken cannot whiten, says Artephius, because blackness is the beginning of whiteness, which is the mark of putrefaction and alteration.

The action of fire on the moist does everything in the work, as it does everything in nature for the generation of mixtures.

During this putrefaction the philosophical male or sulfur is confounded with the female, so that they form only one and the same body, which the Philosophers call hermaphrodite ; it is said Flamel, the androgyne of the ancients, the raven's head & the elements converted in this way, reconcile two natures, which can form an embryo in the womb of the vessel, & then give birth to you a very powerful, invincible & incorruptible king.... that is to say, by our fire equal to that of the Sun.

The second main color is white Hermes says, know Son of Science, that the Vulture cries from the top of the mountain, I am the white of black, because whiteness follows blackness. Morien calls this whiteness white smoke. Alphidius teaches us that this matter or white smoke is the root of the art & quicksilver of the Sages. Philaletes assures us that this quicksilver is the true mercury of the Philosophers; this lively silver, he says, extracted from this very subtle blackness, is the philosophical tingent mercury with its white and red sulphur, naturally mixed together in their mine: the Philosophers have given it an infinity of names.

Artephius says that the whiteness comes from the fact that the soul of the body floats above the water like a white cream, and that the spirits then unite so strongly that they can no longer flee, because they have lost their volatility.
The great secret of the work is therefore to whiten the material; thus the Wise Artist must occupy himself only with dissolving the body with the spirit, cutting off the crow's head, whitening the black & reddening the white; because it is this white & resplendent color which contains in its veins the blood of the pelican, & to leave there a heap of Books which only embarrass the Reader, & to give birth to ideas of some useless & expensive work. The treaty of the work, must cost only for the purchase of the vessel. This whiteness is the perfect stone to white; it is a precious body which, when it is fermented, has become a white elixir, is full of an exuberant tint which it has the property of communicating to all metals; the previously volatile spirits are then fixed, the new body resurrects beautiful, white, immortal, victorious; this is why it has been called, resurrection, light of day, & all the names that can indicate whiteness, fixity & incorruptibility.
Flamel has represented this color in his hieroglyphic figures, by a woman surrounded by a white scroll, to show, he says, that Rebis will begin to turn white in this same way; whitening first at the extremities all around this white circle, the scale of the Philosophers, says the sign of the first part of the whiteness.

As black & white are the two extremes, & as two extremes can only be united by a medium, matter leaving the black color does not suddenly become white; the gray color is intermediate, because it participates in both.

The Philosophers gave it the name of Jupiter, because it succeeds black, which they called Saturn. This is what made d'Espagnet say that air succeeds water after it has completed its seven revolutions, which Flamel called imbibition. Matter, adds d'Espagnet, having fixed itself at the bottom of the vase, Jupiter, after having driven out Saturn, seizes the kingdom and takes over its government. At his advent the philosophical child is formed, nourished in the womb & finally comes to light with a beautiful, shiny & white face, & is therefore a universal remedy for all diseases of the human body.

Finally the third main color is red, it is the complement & the perfection of the stone, we obtain this redness by the only continuation of the cooking of the material. After the first work, it is called male sperm, philosophical gold, stone fire, royal crown, son of the sun, celestial fire mine.

Most of the Philosophers begin their treatise on the work with a stone in red, so that those who read these works cannot pay too much attention to this because it is a source of error for them, both because they cannot guess what matter the Philosophers are then talking about, and because of the operations, the proportions of the materials which are in the second work or the manufacture of the elixir, very different from the shovel of the first. Although the second operation is only a repetition of the first, it is however good to notice that what they call fire, air, earth & water in one, are not the same names in the other, their mercury is called mercury, as well in the liquid form as in the dry form. Those, for example, who read Alphidhius imagine when he calls the matter of the red mining work, that it is necessary to seek for the first beginning of the operations a red matter; some therefore work on cinnabar, others on minium, others on orpiment, others on the rust of iron, because they do not know that this red ore is the perfect stone of the Philosophers.

D'Espagnet describes the way of making philosophical sulfur as follows: choose a red dragon, courageous, which has lost none of its natural strength, then seven or nine virgin eagles, bold, whose rays of the Sun are not capable of dazzling the eyes; put them with the dragon in a clear, transparent & well-closed prison & over a hot bath, to excite them to fight, they will not be long in coming to grips, the fight will be long & very painful, until the forty-fifth or fiftieth day that the eagles will begin to devour the dragon; this one dying will infect the whole prison with his corrupted blood & with a very black venom, to the violence of which the eagles unable to resist will also expire; from the putrefaction of their corpses, a crow will be born which will raise its head little by little, & by increasing the bath, it will spread its wings & begin to fly; the wind, the clouds will carry it here and there, tired of being thus tormented, it will try to escape, so take care that it finds no way out: finally washed & whitened by a constant long-lasting rain & a celestial dew, we will see it metamorphosed into a swan; the birth of the crow will tell you the death of the dragon.

If you want to push to red, add the element of fire which whiteness lacks, without touching or moving the vase from its place, but strengthening the fire by degrees; push its action on matter until the occult becomes manifest, the index will be the color citrine; then govern the fire of the fourth degree, always by the required degrees, until by the help of Vulcan, you see red roses blooming which will change into amaranths, the color of blood; but do not discontinue the work until you see the whole thing reduced to very red and impalpable ashes.

This philosophical sulfur is a land of tenuousness, igneity & extreme dryness, it contains a very abundant natural fire, this is why it has been called stone fire; it has the property of opening, of penetrating the bodies of metals & of changing them into its own nature: it is therefore called Father & masculine seed.
The three colors black, white & red, must necessarily follow one another in the order I have described, but they are not the only ones that manifest themselves, they indicate the essential changes that occur in matter, whereas the other colors, almost infinite & similar to those of the rainbow, are only temporary & of a very short duration. They are species of vapours, which affect the air rather than the earth, which chase each other away, and which dissipate to make room for the three principal ones of which I have spoken.

These foreign colors are however sometimes lines of a bad regime, & of a badly conducted operation, the repeated blackness is a sure mark; because the little crows, says d'Espagnet, must not return to the nest after having left it, the premature redness is still of this number, because it must not appear until the end, as proof of the maturity of the grain and the time of the harvest.

OF THE ELIXIR

Second Operation.

It is not enough to have arrived at the Philosophical sulfur that I have just described, the majority have been deceived there and have abandoned the work in this state, believing to have pushed it to its perfection; ignorance of the processes of nature and art, are the cause of this error: in vain would one attempt to make the projection with this sulfur or red stone. The philosophical stone can only be perfected at the end of the second work, which is called the elixir.

From this first sulfur we make a second which we can then multiply ad infinitum, we must therefore carefully preserve this first ore of celestial fire for the required use.

The elixir, according to d'Espagnet, is composed of a triple matter, namely, metallic water or philosophically sublimated mercury, white ferment, if one wants to make the white elixir or red ferment for the red elixir, & finally of the second sulfur, all according to the weights & philosophical proportion, the elixir must have five qualities, it must be fusible, permanent & penetrating, tinging & multiplying: it draws its tincture & its fixation from the ferment, its fusibility of quicksilver, which serves as a means of uniting the tinctures of ferment and sulfur, and its multiplicative property comes to it from the spirit of the quintessence which it naturally has.

The two perfect metals give a perfect tincture, because they take theirs from the pure sulfur of nature; you must therefore not look for your ferment elsewhere than in these two bodies: tint your white elixir with the Moon, and the red with the Sun. Mercury first receives this tincture & then communicates it, beware of making a mistake in the mixture of ferments, & do not take one for the other; you would lose everything. This second work is done in the same vessel or in a vessel similar to the first, in the same furnace & with the same degrees of heat, but it is much shorter.

The perfection of the elixir consists in the marriage & the perfect union of the dry & the humid, so that they are inseparable, & that the humid gives the dry the property of being fusible & at the slightest heat, we test it by putting a little on a strip of copper or heated iron, if it first melts without smoke, we have what we wish.

ELIXIR PRACTICE

Earth or red ferment, three parts; water & air taken together, six parts: mix it all, & grind it to make an amalgam or metallic paste of the consistency of butter, so that the earth is impalpable or insensible to the touch, add to it one & a half part of fire, & put the whole in a vase of the shape of the first, & that it has a foot long neck, which you will seal perfectly: give it a fire of the first degree for digestion, you will then make the extraction of the elements by their proper degrees of heat, until they are all reduced to fixed earth. Matter will become like a brilliant stone, transparent, red, and will then be in its perfection; take it at will, put it in a crucible over a light fire, & soak this part with its red oil, by inserting it drop by drop, until it melts & flows without smoke: do not fear that your mercury will evaporate, for the earth will drink with pleasure & avidity this humor which is of its nature. You then have your perfect elixir; thank the Great Architect of the Universe for the favor he has done you, & make use of it for his Glory, & only communicate your secret to people of good character.

The white elixir is made in the same way as the red, but with white ferments & white oil.

THE DYE

The tincture in the philosophical sense is the elixir itself made fixed, fusible, penetrating & tingling by the corruption & other operations of which I have spoken. This tincture therefore does not consist in the external color, but in the very substance which gives the tincture with the metallic form, it acts like saffron in water; it penetrates even more than oil furs paper; it mixes intimately like wax with wax, like water with water, because the union is made between two things of the same nature. It is from this property that it derives that of being an admirable panacea for the diseases of the three kingdoms of nature; it will seek in them the radical and vital principle, which it rids by its action of the heterogeneous which embarrass it and hold you in prison, it comes to its aid, & joins him to fight his enemies; they then act in concert & gain a perfect victory. This quintessence drives out the impurity of the bodies, as the fire evaporates the humidity of the woods; it preserves health by giving strength to the principle of life to resist the attacks of disease, and to cause the separation of the truly nutritious substance of food from that which is only its vehicle.

THE MULTIPLICATION

We understand by philosophical multiplication an increase in quantity and quality, and both beyond anything we can imagine. That of quality is a multiplication of the tincture by corruption, volatilization & fixation repeated as many times as the Artist pleases, the second only increases the quantity of the tincture without increasing the virtues.

The second sulfur is multiplied with the same matter from which it was made, by adding a small part of the first according to the required weights and measures.
There are three ways of doing the multiplication, the first is to take one part of the red perfect elixir, which one mixes with nine parts of its red water; put the vase in the bath to dissolve the whole in water; after the solution, this water is cooked until it coagulates into a material similar to a ruby, then this material is inserted in the manner of the elixir, and from this first operation the medicine acquires ten times more virtues than it had, if this same process is repeated a second time, it will increase by one hundred, a third time by a thousand, and thus the leakage always by ten.

The second way is to mix the desired quantity of elixir with its water, keeping however the proportions between one and the other, & after having put the whole in a well-sealed reduction vessel, dissolve it in the bath, & follow the whole regimen of the second by successively distilling the elements by their own fires, until the whole becomes stone; we then insert as in the den & the virtue of the elixir increases by one hundred from the first time, but this way is longer, we repeat it like the first to increase its strength more and more.

The third is the multiplication in quantity, one projects an ounce of the elixir multiplied in quality on one hundred ounces of purified common mercury; this mercury put on a small fire will soon change into an elixir. If we throw an ounce of this new elixir on a hundred ounces of other purified common mercury, it will become very fine gold, the multiplication of the white elixir is done in the same way, taking the white elixir & its water, instead of the red elixir: the more we repeat the multiplication in quality, the more effect it will have in the projection, but not in the third way that I have spoken, because its force decreases with each projection by the common mercury, we cannot however push this re. iteration only up to the fourth or fifth time, because medicine would then be so active and so fiery that the operations would become instantaneous, since their duration is shortened with each repetition; its virtue, moreover, is great enough at the fourth or fifth time to satisfy the desires of the Artist, since from the first one grain can convert a hundred grains of mercury into gold, at the fourth one hundred thousand, &c. we must judge this medicine as the grain which multiplies each time it is sown.

It should be observed that what is called red water is the red powder which the first operation produced; & the perfect elixir or red oil, is the red powder produced by the second operation, this must be understood as mime for the white.

WEIGHTS IN THE WORK

Raymond Lully warns us that this unique thing is not a single thing taken individually, but two things of the same nature which are but one; if there are two or more things to mix, it must be done with proportion, weight & measure. I have spoken of them in the Article of Demonstrative Signs, under the names of Eagle & Dragon, & I have also given the proportions of the materials required for multiplication. We must see from this that the proportions of the materials are not the same in the first and the second work.

GENERAL RULES

ATBefore putting your hand to work in any kind whatsoever, one must have combined everything so much that one finds nothing in the Philosophical Books that one is not in a condition to explain, in order to be able to succeed in the operations one proposes to undertake. For this purpose, it is necessary to be sure of the material to be used, to see if it truly has all the qualities and properties by which the Philosophers designate it, since they admit that they have not named it by the name by which it is ordinarily known; it should be observed that this material costs nothing but the trouble of amassing it, and that the medicine that Philaletus, after Geber, calls medicine of the first order, the first preparation, is perfected without much expense, in any place, at any time, by all kinds of people; provided one has a sufficient quantity of material, which must be at least thirty to forty pounds.

The terms conversion, desiccation, mortification, inspissation, preparation, alteration, mean only the same thing in Hermetic art. Sublimation, descension, distillation, putrefaction, calcination, freezing, fixation, ceration, are in themselves different things; but they constitute in the work only one and the same operation continued in the same vase: the Philosophers gave all these names only to the different things or changes which they saw happening in the vase: when they saw the matter exhaling in subtle smoke, and rising to the top of the vase, they named this ascension, sublimation; seeing this vapor then descend to the bottom of the vase, they called it descension, distillation.

Morien says as follows: our whole operation consists in extracting water from its earth, and putting it back there until the earth rots and purifies itself; when they saw that this water mixed with its earth coagulated or thickened, that it became black and smelly, they said that it was putrefaction, the principle of generation; this putrefaction lasts until the matter has turned white.

This matter being black is reduced to powder, when it begins to become gray, this appearance of ashes gave birth to the idea of ​​calcination, inceration, etc., & when it reached a great whiteness, they named it perfect calcination, seeing that the matter took on a solid consistency, that it no longer flowed, it formed their freezing, their induration; this is why they said that the whole magisterium consists in dissolving & coagulating naturally, & cooking by the same regime until dark red. We must therefore take care to stir the vase and remove it from the central fire, because if the material cooled, all would be lost.
To give a fire of the first degree, the body of the vessel must be a quarter in the ground; to give it a fire of the second degree, it is necessary to put earth up to half of the body, &c.

VIRTUES OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL ELIXIR

It is, according to the saying of all the Philosophers, the source of wealth and health, since with it one can make gold and silver in abundance, and one is not only cured of all diseases that can be cured, but also that by its moderate use one can prevent them; a single grain of this medicine or red elixir, given to paralytics, hydropics, gouts, lepers, will cure them, provided they take the same quantity for a few days only.

Epilepsy, colic, colds, inflammations, phrenesia, and any other internal disease, cannot stand against this principle of life. It is a sure cure for all kinds of eye diseases. All apostemes, ulcers, wounds, cancers, fistulas, nolimetanger y & all diseases of the skin, by dissolving a grain of it in a glass of wine or water, from which one bathes the external evils, it gradually melts the stone in the bladder; it drives out all venom & poison, drinking it as above.

Raymond Lully assures us that it is generally a sovereign remedy against all the evils which afflict humanity from head to foot, that it cures them in one day if they have lasted a month, in twelve days if they are a year old, and in one month however old they may be.

Arnaud de Villeneuve says that its effectiveness is infinitely superior to that of all the remedies of Hippocrates, Gallienus, Alexander, Avicenna & all ordinary medicine, that it rejoices the heart, gives vigor & strength, preserves youth &c makes old age green again, in general, that it cures all diseases both hot and cold, both dry and wet.

Geber, without enumerating the illnesses it cures, is content to say that it overcomes all those which ordinary physicians regard as incurable; that it rejuvenates old age, & maintains it in health for many years, even beyond the ordinary course, by taking only the size of a grain of mustard, two or three times a week on an empty stomach.

Philalète adds to this, that it cleanses the skin of all spots, wrinkles, &c. ; that she frees the woman in child labor, even if he is dead, holding only the powder in the nose of the mother, and cites Hermès as his guarantor, he claims to have himself drawn from the arms of death many patients abandoned by Doctors. One finds the manner of making use of it particularly for all the diseases, in the Works of Raymond Lully & Arnaud de Villeneuve.

APOLOGY OF THE GREAT WORK

The great Work of the Sages holds the first rank among beautiful things; nature, without art, cannot complete it, and art without nature dares not undertake it; it is a masterpiece that limits the power of both; its effects are so miraculous that the health it procures and preserves for the living, the perfection it gives to all the compounds of nature, and the great riches it produces in a wholly divine fashion, are not its greatest marvels.

If the Great Architect of the universe made him the most perfect agent of nature, one can say without fear that he received the same power from heaven for morals, if he purifies the body, he enlightens the minds; if he brings the mixtures to the highest point of their perfection, he can elevate our understandings to the highest knowledge; he is the Savior of the Great World, since he purges all things of original stains, and by his virtue repairs the disorder of their temperament.

It subsists in a perfect ternary of three truly distinct pure principles, and which are but one and the same nature. He is originally the universal spirit of the world embodied in a virgin earth, being the first production or the first mixture of the elements at the first point of his birth. He is worked in his first preparation, he sheds his blood, he dies, he gives up his spirit, he is buried in his vessel, he ascends to heaven all quintessential to examine the healthy & the sick, destroying the central impurity of some & exalting the principles of others; so that it is not without reason that he is called by the Sages, the Savior of the great World & the figure of that of our Souls. One can justly say that if it produces wonders in nature, introducing a very great purity into the bodies, it also works miracles in morality, illuminating our minds with the highest light. destroying the central impurity of some & exalting the principles of others; so that it is not without reason that he is called by the Sages, the Savior of the great World & the figure of that of our Souls. One can justly say that if it produces wonders in nature, introducing a very great purity into the bodies, it also works miracles in morality, illuminating our minds with the highest light. destroying the central impurity of some & exalting the principles of others; so that it is not without reason that he is called by the Sages, the Savior of the great World & the figure of that of our Souls. One can justly say that if it produces wonders in nature, introducing a very great purity into the bodies, it also works miracles in morality, illuminating our minds with the highest light.
I leave the readers the freedom to draw the consequences they deem appropriate & suitable.

MAINTENANCE OF THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS WITH GOLD AND VULGAR MERCURY

The subject of this interview is a dispute that Gold and Mercury once had with the Stone of the Philosophers, and this is how a true Philosopher speaks, who has come to possess this great secret.

I protest to you, with a sincere heart, touched with compassion for those who have long been engaged in great research; & I certify to all of you who cherish this marvelous art, that all our work originates from a single thing, & that in this thing the work finds its perfection, without needing anything other than to be dissolved & coagulated, which it must do of itself without the aid of any foreign thing.

When we put ice in a vase placed on the fire, we see that the heat causes it to dissolve into water: we must use it in the same way with our stone, which only needs the help of the Artist, the operation of his hands, and the action of natural fire, because it will never resolve itself, if it would remain eternally on the earth: this is why we must help it in such a way, whenever we add anything to it. foreign & contrary.

Just as God produces wheat in the fields, and it is then for us to put it into flour, knead it and make it into bread, so our art requires that we do the same thing: God created this mineral for us, so that we could take it on our own, so that we could decompose its coarse and thick body.

Those who apply themselves to the research of our art, and who know how metals and minerals should be treated, will be able to be enlightened enough in the dispute between the Stone of the Philosophers, Gold and Mercury, to arrive straight at the goal they have in mind.

NARRATIVE

The Gold & the Mercury went one day at gunpoint to fight & to subjugate the Stone of the Philosophers; Gold, in a rage, began to speak of this sort.

GOLD
How dare you have the temerity to rise above me & my brother Mercury, & take preference over us, you who are only a puffy verse? don't you know that I am the most precious, the most constant & the first of all metals? Don't you know that Monarchs, Princes & Peoples alike make all their wealth consist of me & my brother Mercury, & that you are on the contrary the dangerous enemy of men & metals, whereas the most skilful Physicians never cease to publish & praise the singular virtues that I possess, to give & to preserve health to everyone?

STONE
To these words full of anger, the Stone replied, without being moved, my dear Gold, why don't you rather be angry with the
Great Architect, & why don't you ask him why he didn't create in you what is in me?

GOLD
It is God himself who has given me the honour, the reputation and the brilliance which make me so estimable, it is for this reason that I am so much in search of everyone. One of my greatest perfections is to be an unalterable metal in the fire, & out of the fire, so everyone loves me & runs after me: but you are only a fugitive, & a deceiver, who deceives all men: this is seen in that you fly away, & that you escape from the hands of those who work with you.

STONE
It is true, my dear Gold, it is God who has given you the honour, the confidence and the beauty, which make you precious: this is why you are obliged to return eternal graces to his Divine Goodness, and not to despise others as you do: for I can tell you that you are not this Gold, of which the writings of the Philosophers make mention; but that this Gold is hidden in my bosom. It is true, I admit it, I am sinking in the fire, and I do not remain there, however you say very well that God and nature have given me this quality, and that it must be so; especially since my fluidity works to the advantage of the Artist, who knows how to extract it; know, however, that my soul remains constant in me, and that it is more stable and more fixed than you are, gold as you are, and than all your brothers and all your companions are.

So it's not my fault if I'm wanted by Artists, who don't know how to work with me, or how I should be prepared.

They often mix me up with foreign matters, which are entirely contrary to me. They add to me water, powders & other similar things, which destroy my nature, & the properties which are essential to me, so there is barely one among a hundred who works with me. They all apply themselves to seeking the truth of the art in you and in your brother Mercury: this is why they all err, and it is in this that their works are false. They themselves are a good example of this, for it is useless that they use their Gold, and that they try to destroy it: all that remains to them is extreme poverty, to which they are finally reduced.

It is you Gold, who are the first cause of this misfortune, you know very well that without me, it is impossible to make any gold or silver, which are perfect, and that it is only me alone who has this marvelous advantage. Why do you suffer then, that almost the whole world bases its operations on you, & on Mercury? If you still had any remnant of honesty, you would certainly prevent men from abandoning themselves to certain loss: but as instead you do just the opposite, I can maintain with truth that it is you alone who are a deceiver.

GOLD
I want to convince you by the authority of the Philosophers, that the truth of the art can be achieved with me: read Hermes, he speaks thus: the Sun is his father, and the Moon his mother, but I am the only one Compared to the Sun.

Aristotle, Avicenna, Pliny and Serapion, Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Mesue, Rasis, Averroes, Geber, Raymond Lully, Albert the Great, Arnaud de Villeneuve, and a large number of other philosophers whom I pass over in silence for not being long, all write clearly and distinctly that metals and physical tincture are only composed of sulfur and mercury; that this sulfur must be red, incombustible, constantly resistant to fire, and that the mercury must be clear, and well purified. They speak of this kind without any reserve, they call me openly by my own name, & say that in the gold, that is to say in me, is found the red sulfur, digestible, fixed & incombustible, which is true & quite evident: for there is no one who does not know well that I am a very constant &c unalterable metal,
The Mercury was of the opinion of the Gold, he approved his speech; maintained that all that his brother had just said was true, and that the work could be perfected in the manner that the above alleged Philosophers had written. He even added that everyone knew enough how great was the mutual friendship that there was between gold and him, preferably to all other metals, that there was no one who could not easily judge of it by the testimony of his own eyes; that Goldsmiths & other similar Artisans, knew very well that when they wanted to gild some work, they could not do without the mixture of gold & mercury, & that they made the conjunction in a very short time, without difficulty, & with very little work: what should we not hope to do with more time,

STONE
At this speech, Pierre laughed, and said to them: in truth, you both deserve to be laughed at, and at your demonstration; but it's you Gold, whom I admire even more, seeing that you make yourself believe so much, for the advantage you have of being good at certain things. Can you persuade yourself that the ancient Philosophers wrote as they did, in a sense which should be understood in the ordinary way? & do you think we should simply interpret their words literally?

GOLD
I am certain that the Philosophers & Artists I have just cited have not written lies. They are all of the same feeling concerning the virtue that I possess: it is quite true that there have been some who have wanted to seek in things that are entirely remote, the power and the properties that are in me. They have worked on certain herbs, on animals, on blood, on urine, on hair, on sperm, & on things of this nature: these have no doubt deviated from the true path, & have sometimes written falsehoods; but it is not the same with the Masters whom I have named. We have certain evidence that they indeed possessed this great art, and therefore we must believe their writings.

STONE
consider all things with prudence, examine the relationship & the agreement that there is between one thing & another, & by this means they penetrate into the foundation of the art; so that by reasoning & by meditation, they finally discover what is the matter of the Philosophers, among whom there is none who wanted to indicate it, nor make it known openly, & by his own name.

They declare themselves clearly on this, when they say that they never reveal the secret of their art less than when they speak clearly, and according to the ordinary way of expressing themselves, but they admit on the contrary that when they make use of similes, figures, and parables, it is in truth in these places of their writings that they manifest their art: for the Philosophers, after having discussed gold and mercury, do not fail to declare afterwards, and to assure that their gold is not the Sun or common gold, and that their mercury is not common mercury either, here is the reason.

Gold is a perfect metal, which, because of the perfection that nature has given it, cannot be brought by art to a more perfect degree, so that in any way that gold can be worked with, whatever artifice that is used, if its color and its tint are extracted a hundred times, the Artist will never make more gold, and will never tint a greater quantity of metal, than there was color and tint in the gold, from which it will have been extracted. e: it is for this reason that the Philosophers say that one must seek perfection in imperfect things, and that one will find it there.

Raimond Lully, whom you quoted to me, shares this same feeling, he assures us that what must be made better must not be perfect, because in what is perfect there is nothing to change, and one destroys its nature rather than adding something to its perfection.

GOLD
I am not unaware that the Philosophers speak in this way, however it can be applied to my brother Mercury, who is still imperfect: but if we are joined together, he then receives from me the perfection he lacks: for he is of the female sex, and I am of the male sex; which makes the Philosophers say that art is a homogeneous whole. You see an example of this in the procreation of men, for no child can be born without the mating of the male and the female; that is to say, without the conjunction of one with the other. We have a similar example in animals, and in all living beings.

STONE
It is true, your brother Mercury is imperfect, and therefore he is not the Mercury of the wise; also when you would be conjoined together, & that you would be held thus in the fire during courses of several years, to try to unite yourselves perfectly one with the other, it will always arrive the same thing; to know that as soon as mercury feels the action of fire, it separates from you, sublimates itself, flies away & leaves you alone below; that if you are dissolved in strong water, if you are resolved, if you are distilled, and if you are coagulated, you will nevertheless never produce anything but a powder and a red precipitate: that if you project this powder on an imperfect metal, it does not tint it; but, one finds there as much gold, as one had put there at the beginning, and your brother Mercury leaves you and flees.

These are the experiments that those who attach themselves to the research of Chemistry, have made to their great damage, during a long series of years; this is where all the knowledge they have acquired through their work ends up; but as regards the proverb of the ancients, which you want to take advantage of, that art is an entirely homogeneous whole, that no child can be born without the male and the female, and that you imagine that by this the Philosophers mean to speak of you and of your brother Mercury, I must tell you clearly that this is false, and that it is inappropriately understood by you, even though in these same places the Philosophers speak justly, and tell the truth. I certify to you that this is the cornerstone they have laid, and against which several thousand men have stumbled.
Can you imagine that it must be the same with metals as with things that have life; it happens in this what happens to all false Artists; for when you read such passages in the Philosophers, you do not bother to examine them further, to try to find out whether such expressions tally and agree or not, with what has been said before, or which is said hereafter: however you must know that all that the Philosophers have written of the work in figurative terms, must be understood of me alone and not of something else which is in the world since it is only I alone who can do what they say, and that without me it is impossible to make any real gold or silver.

GOLD
Good God ! Aren't you ashamed of uttering such a big lie, and are you not afraid of committing a sin, in glorifying yourself to such an extent, as of daring to attribute to yourself alone all that so many wise and learned personages have written about this art, for so many centuries, you who are nothing but filthy, impure and poisonous matter, and you admit notwithstanding that this art is a perfectly homogeneous whole? furthermore thou sayest that without thee there can be no real gold or silver, as being a universal thing; is this not a manifest contradiction, especially since several scholars have applied themselves with so much care and exactitude to the curious researches they have made, that they have found other paths; these are processes that are called particulars,

STONE
My dear Gold, do not be surprised at what I have just told you, and do not be so imprudent as to impute a lie to me who am older than you; if I should happen to be mistaken in that, you should with good reason excuse my great age, since you are not unaware that one must show respect to old age.

To make you see that I have spoken the truth, in order to defend my honor, I only want to rely on the authority of the same Masters that you cited to me, and that consequently you are not entitled to challenge: let us see Hermes in particular, he speaks thus: it is true, without lying, certain & very true, that what is below is similar to what is above, & what is above is similar to what is below; it is by these things that one can work the miracles of a single thing.

This is how Aristotle speaks: O! that this thing is admirable, which contains in itself all the things that we need. She kills herself, & then she resumes life of herself, she marries herself, she impregnates herself, she is born of herself, she resolves herself into her own blood, she coagulates again with it, & takes on a hard consistency, she turns white, she turns red of herself; we change nothing in it, except that we separate its coarseness and earthiness.

The philosopher Plato speaks of me in these terms: it is a single, unique thing, of a single & same species in itself, it has a body, a soul & a spirit, & the four elements, over which it dominates. It lacks nothing, it does not need other bodies; for it engenders itself: all things are of it, by it, and in it.

I could produce several other testimonies for you here, but as it is not necessary, I pass them over in silence, so as not to be boring; & as you have just spoken to me of particular processes, I am going to explain to you in what they differ from art: some Artists who have worked with me, have pushed their work so far, that they have come to the end of separating from me my spirit, which contains my tincture, so that by mixing it with other metals & minerals, they have managed to communicate a little of my virtues & my forces, to the metals which have some affinity & some friendship with me, however the Artists who have succeeded by this way, & who have surely found a part of the art, are really very few in number: but as they have not known the origin from which the dyes come, it was impossible for them to push their work further, and they did not find in the end, that there was a great utility in their process: but if these Artists had carried their research beyond, and that they had examined well what is the woman which is proper to me, that they had sought it, and that they had united me to her, it is then that I could have dyed a thousand times more, but instead of that they completely destroyed my own nature, in me mingling with foreign things; this is why, although in making their calculation, they found some very mediocre advantage, however, in comparison with the great power that is in me: it is nevertheless certain that this utility only proceeded, & had its origin only from me, & not from anything else with which I could have been mixed.

GOLD
You have not proved enough by what you have just said, for even though the Philosophers speak of a single thing which contains in itself the four elements, which has a body, a soul and a spirit, and by this thing they want to make understood the physical tincture, when it has been pushed to its ultimate perfection, which is the goal towards which they tend, nevertheless this thing must from its beginning be composed of me, who am Gold and of my brother Mercury, as being both the masculine seed, and the feminine seed. , as it was said above, because after we have been sufficiently cooked, & transmuted into tincture, we are then one & the other together a single thing of which the Philosophers speak.

STONE
It does not go as you imagine it, I have already told you before, that there cannot be a true union of you two, because you are not one body, but two bodies together, and consequently you are contrary to considering the foundation of nature, but I have an imperfect body, a constant soul, a penetrating tincture, I have moreover a clear, transparent, volatile and mobile mercury, and I can operate all the great things, of which you pride yourself. ify both, without you being able to do them, because it is I who carry in my bosom the philosophical Gold, and the Mercury of the sages; this is why the Philosophers speaking of me, say our Stone is invisible, and it is not possible to acquire the possession of our Mercury otherwise than by means of two bodies,

It is for this reason that there is only me alone who possesses a masculine and feminine seed, and which is at the same time an entirely homogeneous whole; so I am called hermaphrodite . Richard Anglais, testifies to me, saying the first matter of our Stone, is called Rebis , twice thing, that is to say, a thing which has received from nature a double occult property, which gives it the name of hermaphrodite, as one would say a matter of which it is difficult to be able to distinguish the sex, and to discover whether it is male or female, especially since it inclines equally on both sides: this is why universal medicine is made of a thing, which is the water, & the spirit of the body.

This is what has caused it to be said that this medicine which has deceived a large number of fools, because of the multitude of enigmas, under which it is enveloped, nevertheless this art requires only one thing, which is known to many, & which is in the possession of everyone, which many desire; & the whole thing is a thing that has no equal in the universe, it is however vile, & it can be obtained at little cost: it should not be despised for that, because it does & perfects admirable things.

The philosopher Alain says, you who work in this art, you must have a perfect knowledge of this divine matter, & have a firm & constant application of mind to your work, & not begin to try now one thing & now another. Art does not consist in the plurality of species, but in the body and in the spirit. O how true it is, that the medicine of our Stone is a thing, a vessel, a conjunction! all artifice begins with one thing & ends with one thing; although the Philosophers, with the intention of concealing this great art, describe several ways namely, a continual conjunction, a mixing, a sublimation, a desiccation, & just as many other ways & operations that can be named by different names but the solution of the body,
This is how Geber speaks, there is a sulfur in the depth of the mercury, which cooks it & which digests it in the veins of the mines, for a very long time. So you see clearly, my dear Gold, that I have amply demonstrated to you that this sulfur is only in me alone, since I do everything myself, without your help and without that of all your brothers and all your companions. I don't need you, but you all need me, especially since I can give you all perfection, and raise you above the state in which nature has placed you.

At these last words, Gold angered him furiously, not knowing any more what to answer, he nevertheless took counsel with his brother Mercury, & they agreed together who would assist each other, hoping that being two against our Stone, who is but one & only thing, they would easily overcome it, so that after not having been able to conquer it by dispute, they took resolution to put it to death with the sword: for this purpose they joined their forces, in order to increase by the union of their double power.

The combat took place, our Pierre deployed his forces and his valour, fought them both, surmounted them, dissipated them and engulfed them one and the other; so that there remained no vertigo which could show what had become of them.
Thus, dear Friends, who have the fear of God before their eyes, what I have just told you must make you know the truth & enlighten your minds as much as is necessary to understand the foundation of the greatest & most precious of all treasures, which no Philosopher has so clearly exposed, discovered, or brought to light.

OBSERVATION

So pay attention to all that I have just said about Mercury, because according to the Philosophers, our Mercury is the only one of the Sages, and whoever would work without him would be like someone who wants to use a bow without a string.

However, this Mercury is not such on the earth; but one extracts it as I have indicated, in the work, from the materials in which it is contained, not by the way of creation, but like a child that one draws from its mother's womb, by an admirable means, and by an industrious art.

Any Adept will see that I am not advancing fables, & that these are real experiences that have been made by the most learned Authors who have treated this matter, this is why writing this for the good of my neighbour, it suffices for me to say that no one has spoken of this art with as much clarity as me; several times I left the pen wanting to hide the truth under the mask of envy. But God, who alone knows hearts, determined me to do it, and I give him glory. So I do not doubt that there will be many in these latter days who will find themselves happy to possess this secret. And as I write sincerely, I will leave no doubt without fully satisfying it; for this purpose, as I announced in the work that the Artist could compensate for the lack of the central heat of the place where he would incubate his philosophical egg; I will give at the end a description of the fire of the Athanor & its furnace; it should be observed that by the number of the eagles, one indicates how many times must be purified & sublimated the philosophical Mercury, thus when one tells you to take seven or nine eagles, it means to take philosophical Mercury which will have been sublimated seven or nine times.

Whoever wishes to possess this Golden Fleece, must know that our Auric Powder, which we call our Stone, is the only gold digested & brought to the highest degree of purity & fixity, where it can be taken, as much by nature as by the care of a skilful Artist. This gold, therefore essencified or pushed to this supreme degree of perfection, is no longer ordinary gold, but that of the Sages. I could, on this subject, quote all the Philosophers, but the truth does not need witnesses.
Whoever wants to believe me or disapprove of me: even if they can censure me, anything they can oppose me will only produce profound ignorance, I know that minds that want to refine the work form a thousand chimeras; but the truth will only be found by following exactly the simple path of nature.

So you don't need anything else: all you have to do is pray to God, that he will grant you the possession of a jewel, which is of inestimable price, after that sharpen the point of your minds; read the writings of the Sages with caution, work with diligence & exactness, act not hastily in so precious a work. It has its time ordered by nature, just like the fruits which are on the trees, and the bunches of grapes which the vine bears. Have righteousness in your heart, and aim for an honest end in your work; otherwise God will grant you nothing; for it only communicates such a great gift to those who want to make good use of it, and it deprives those who intend to use it to commit evil. Above all, do not forget the poor, & I pray God to give you the Holy Blessing. So be it.

HOW TO MAKE THE PROJECTION

Take a part of your perfect Stone, either white or red, then melt in a crucible four parts of one of the fixed metals; namely, silver if it is white, & gold if it is red; therefore add part of your stone according to the species you want to produce, throw the whole thing into a hot, greased spelter cone, you will have a mass left which you can easily powder. Then take ten parts of Mercury, purged & purified, put it on the fire, & when it begins to fizz & smoke, throw in a part of your powder, which will fix the Mercury in the twinkling of an eye, melt this fixed matter with violent fire, &c you will have a stone or medicine of an inferior order.

Take again a part of this last matter, which you will project on any metal whatsoever, but let it be purified & put in fusion by fire, project as much of your stone as it can dye of this metal, & you will have gold or silver purer than that which is formed by nature.

However it is always better to make the projection by degree, until your stone gives no more tincture, because by projecting a small portion of powder on a lot of imperfect metal, unless it is on quicksilver, there is then a considerable loss of stone, because of the dross of impure metals. This is why the more the metal is purified before the projection, the better one succeeds in the transmutation.

DESCRIPTION OF THE ATHANOR OR PHILOSOPHICAL FURNACE

The ATHANOR has a tower & a nest, this tower must be two feet & a little higher, one foot in diameter inside, the thickness of the sides must be two inches on each side; the door where the fire is, must have seven inches of elevation, & must be thicker at the bottom than at the top, & that this thickness always decreases in an imperceptible way, up to the upper part. Above the ground or the lowest part of the furnace, a small door, three or four inches square, is needed, through which the ashes can be removed, above it a grate is needed, & an inch higher there will be two holes which will circulate the heat in the Athanor, this tower no more than the nest, must have no opening or slot, the nest must not be lower than the basin, which must be struck immediately by the fire, & this fire must have its outlet through three to four holes, the nest will have its lid with a window, & must contain a matrass a foot long or thereabouts, otherwise there must be a hole in the lid of the nest, to pass the neck of the matrass.

Everything being thus arranged, the furnace must be placed in a lighted place, place the coals at the top of the tower, first we will put lighted coals, then black coals, & put its lid on it which we will join with the sifted ashes, so that no air can enter: this only furnace must be used to carry out the work to its perfection. otherwise there must be a hole in the lid of the nest, to pass the neck of the matrass. Everything being thus arranged, the furnace must be placed in a lighted place, place the coals at the top of the tower, first we will put lighted coals, then black coals, & put its lid on it which we will join with the sifted ashes, so that no air can enter: this only furnace must be used to carry out the work to its perfection. otherwise there must be a hole in the lid of the nest, to pass the neck of the matrass. Everything being thus arranged, the furnace must be placed in a lighted place, place the coals at the top of the tower, first we will put lighted coals, then black coals, & put its lid on it which we will join with the sifted ashes, so that no air can enter: this only furnace must be used to carry out the work to its perfection.

If the Artist is industrious, he will find other means of giving a suitable fire, always arranging the Athanor in such a way that without touching the matrass, one can change the degrees of the fire, as one will judge appropriate from a heat, such as that of fever, to the fire of the small street lamp or of an obscure red. Make sure that in its strength it can remain at least seven to eight hours in the same equality, without being obliged to put new coal in it; if it lasted less it would be a new work, then you have the first door of the work. As soon as you have made the stone, you will be able to have a portable stove, because the other operations are much less difficult, & require less time; so they don't need such a strong fire, nor a stove difficult to transport; & as it is only a question of multiplying, we can make the fire last for at least the space of a week in the same equality, we must take care to put in the Athanor below & around the philosophical egg some vine shoot ashes.

END