Treatise on harmony and general constitution of the true
secret salt of philosophers, and of the universal spirit of the world
following the third principle of the cosmopolitan.

work no less curious than profitable, dealing with the knowledge of true chemical medicine.

Collected by the sieur de nuisement Receiver general of the County of Ligny en Barrois.

in THE HAGUE

From the printing house of Théodore Maire.

M.DC.XXXIX. - 1639
PSP Transcription

Table of chapters.

Table of chapters. 2
Monsignor the Duke of Lorraine and Bar, etc. 3
Preface. 6
To the reader. 14
Book I. 15
Chapter I. 15
Chapter II. 20
Chapter III. 21
Chapter IV. 22
Chapter V. 26
Chapter VI. 28
Chapter VII. 29
Chapter VIII. 30
Chapter IX. 32
Second Book. 34
Chapter. I. 34
Chapter II. 38
Chapter III. 51
Chapter IV. 72
Third Book. 94

a very high, very powerful, and very virtuous Prince,
Monsignor the Duke of Lorraine and Bar, etc.

Monseigneur, even though this Phoenix of fine minds: (French Monseigneur, of the very illustrious house of Candale) was made as admirable in the practice of the mechanical Arts, where he excelled the most ingenious and renowned of his century, as in the profound Theory of the rarest sciences, which seem not to have been guaranteed from the universal flood, except to fill it with glory: and although it can of its own invention provide in one and the other perfection of the following ages of copies of his inimitable masterpieces: if he did not believe all the effort more carefully employed than to give, through the excellent commentaries, a new birth to the Pimander of Hermes, which such a long series of centuries had kept buried, like too cowardly abandoned by some because of its obscurity, and frivolously neglected by others, who judging it by its entrance considered it a dream made for pleasure.

Those through impatience, and those through inconsiderate contempt, unfortunately deprived themselves of the usufruct of this inestimable treasure: and made us share in their damage without this new Hercules, who passed the Archeron and the Cocithus went despite Cerberus to remove him from the black river of oblivion, into which ignorance and envy had precipitated him. So he brought it back to us all moist and dripping from this long shipwreck, and gave it such luster again by the brilliance of the precious stones with which he enriched it, that among the creation of the world we clearly see so many brilliant rays of the secrets sparkling. wonders of God and Nature, that this first darkness ignorantly aborted, and this abhot slightly considered fabulous are today admired and cherished by all: to see confessed by the most enlightened as pleasant and mysterious as if they had been produced by someone of the Prophets: giving grounds for many to give credence to the historians who hold that Hermes was the father-in-law of Moses named Gétro, and that divinely inspired in all things more hidden, he taught him the cabal, and occult Philosophy to his sister Mary , called the prophetess, of whom we remain as an irreproachable witness certain fragment, which all those who have written of the truth of this Art, allege with reverence.

And it seems that most still want to assure us that it was he who, after the flood, entering the valley of Ebron found the seven marble tables, on which the principles of the seven liberal arts had been sculpted by the first sages, in order to that they did not perish with them: and that having alone a perfect understanding, he taught them to the people, and gave them that clarity which still enlightens us today. The dream of Scipio, that of Poliphilus, and of Lisias of Plato, notwithstanding this title, have brought as much praise to these authors as all their ancient writings: and have been no less esteemed for the invention than the work. Considering that in order to deal worthily with such lofty matters it is very necessary for the soul, escaping from its prison, to go freely to visit the supreme regions, and to confer with its fellows: which it could not do having always at its feet the importunate against weight of this earthly mass, which it shakes off and leaves while the graceful charms of sleep aggravating the body leave the doors open for it.

Now it was this powerful Athlete (Monseigneur) who first opened for me the strong barrier which defends the entrance to this ample Philosophical lists, where so many valiant champions ran and debated the prize proposed by the three great Mercury. And who obliged me to follow his steps (though slowly and from an infinite distance) by encouragement and precept only in favor of the Prince to whom I had the honor to be; he deigned to give me from my youth; after having, through his humanity, not common to those of his rank, made me a participant in what he held most dear; communicating to me works without a paragon, and designs which had nothing to do with humanity. If by chance he is noticed in this bouquet, from which he presents your Highness, some flowers from his flowerbed, I must be forgiven; since Plato himself, to whom we give the nickname divine, was not conscious of displaying as his own in the eyes of his posterity the sacred relics which he had collected in the temple of Socrates. And then we must also receive for a legitimate excuse, that my design is so concatenated and dependent on his, that if death had had eyes and judgment to see and consider the harm it did to mortals to extinguish them before the time such a beautiful and useful light, or that the wishes and clamors of curious learned people could have curbed the impiety of this indefatigable deaf woman, and still obtained a little respite for her; it is indubitable that he had with the same hand enshrined in the Gold of his second mine, the rich emerald table in which this old Egyptian Philosopher, in imitation of his wise predecessors, engraved the double mystery, or the unique double-meaning mystery, which Hortulain and some others have entirely applied to the effect of their metallic transmutations: just as I strove to tie it with an indissoluble knot to its Pimander; with whom he has so much conformity and sympathy, that they seem to have been composed one for the other. Because if the first deals with the Creation of the universe, the second naively depicts the universal Spirit who gives life and movement to all the members of this great body.

General spirit in which the living seeds of the three genera are occultly enclosed: from which all things are produced in the world: by which they grow, persist, and multiply: and in which they must all be reduced when they have reached the limit that Nature gives them planted. All that I must more accurately apprehend, Monsignor, This is the reproach that your Highness can make of me for using your greatness and your name so rashly to protect my labors, unworthy of such an illustrious Maecenas. And that I should at least be content with having audaciously desecrated them once by placing them at the front of the verses that I will present to you some time ago; without once again abusing your august patience. But I am resolved to tell anyone who blames me, even your Highness, that I would rather be considered insolent than the desire I have to pay in no way what I owe to your generous generosity, than deprive me of the continuation of your benefits by a cowardly and shameful act of ingratitude. Besides that it is my destiny which naturally carries me: for Heaven gave me birth only to die,

Monsignor,
Your very humble, very obedient, and very obliged servant, De Nuisement.

---

Preface.

I have no doubt that this book arriving in public will be rejected by many, and received by few: because human minds being commonly offended by the fog of ignorance, and the multitude of blind people greatly outnumbering the number of clairvoyants, the rarest sciences have always been the least known and the most despised; either by negligence, or by greed for gain, preferring the useful to the honest. So that such people believing they were born to have, not to know, devote themselves entirely to the pursuit of lucre; and differs very little from the animals which only take care of the pasture.

But if they would sometimes return within themselves, illuminated by this divine ray of knowledge, they would find that food is given to them for the support of life; and life to devote themselves to the inquisition of truth for the respect of which they are gifted with ratiocination. Foreseeing therefore that the same cause which degraded them, and caused them to degenerate from the glorious destiny of their birth, could produce a contempt for this work of mine, in order to see some ray of the Chemical Art sparkle there, (although this is not my aim) but because I dare to undertake to decipher what the three times great Hermes taught so covertly in his table, that several excellent minds found themselves confused there, I wanted by this Preface to admonish the curious that they do not seek here the Golden Fleece, or the apples of the Hesperides: But only a naive description of the first principles of Nature; in whose rich bosom lie all the treasures of the world.

Truly priceless treasures; and preceding by an extreme distance everything that the vulgar most admire and idolize. That if it happens that some leave this book and drip from it, to abhor Chemical things; Neither he nor I can deserve the blame, since the appetites are different; And may their palates, stuffed with the dregs of popular error, prevent them from savoring these exquisite meats: which on the contrary are the dearest delights of the fine minds; who will readily confess that man absolutely does not deserve the title of Scientist, if he is not a Chemist: because the natural principles, nor the true universal matter, will never be perceived except through the experience of the Chemical Art: as this father of Philosophers has clearly declared; when having shown by whom, how, and of what the first subject of things is made, (that is to say, this general Spirit of the World,) by what means it is corporified and specified in various forms and genres: and how from him everything that is low and high is produced, perfected, maintained, and increased; it still opens the way for the wise to enter through a deep consideration of the secret effects of nature into the search and invention of the means by which, with the help of fire, they can achieve the perfect worlding of this spirit infused in all the body ; to extract a very pure essence, capable of producing incredible effects; and as infinite in wonders as in number.

This I do not say here to try to move men to cherish my opinion, although they should not rashly reject it, without seeing if I am speaking with probable reasons, supported by ancient authorities. It is therefore to those who, separated from the vulgar, have some feeling for true Philosophy, that I entrust the judgment of this work, and to whom I dedicate this fruit, if they can reap any from it.

His Highness.

Prince, whose beautiful soul is august and magnificent;
In all its movements its splendor shines:
Splendor which serves as a chandelier to the illustrious candor,
Which prepares for it a seat at the Angelic conclave;
Deign to see this portrait where with a rustic hand
I have painted the immense Spirit of the lower world;
Which produces in the center, and on the outside,
Three different genres, whose essence is unique.
I would have hidden my shame by veiling my painting;
But I fear that your eyes; penetrating the curtain,
Disdain in me the ruse of Timanthe.
Grand Duke, be like the divinity;
Excuse the faults of my weakness;
It is my all, and my best, that I present to my all.

Commentary

or exhibition of the table of Hermès Trimégiste. Dealing with the general spirit of the world. The text of which table is contained in the sonnet below.

Sonnet.

It is an assured point full of admiration,
That the high and the low are only the same thing:
That to make of one in the whole enclosed world,
Marvelous effects by adaptation.
A single one has mediated everything,
And for parents, womb and nurse, we place
Phoebus, Diana, the air and the earth, where rests
This thing in which lies all perfection.
If we turn it into earth it has full force:
Separating by great art, but easy way,
The subtle from the thick, and the earth from the fire.
From the earth it rises to heaven; and then to earth,
From Heaven she descends, Receiving little by little,
The virtues of both that in her belly she encloses.

Sonnets containing
The arguments of this book.

Of the adaptation of Divine, Natural and Artificial things.

Sonnet.

God, Nature and Art, incomparable Triad,
Delight every spirit in admiration
Of design, of labor, of perfection,
Where shines from All Three the incredible power
Although in his lofty projects God is inimitable,
Nature in its progress follows its intention:
And then the Art which adds to the simple action,
Makes Nature admire and makes itself admirable.
Who contemplates, and understands, with deep judgment,
God, Nature and Art, sees and knows how they do
Ordering, producing, and perfecting things:
For God, Nature and Art, of a divine Triangle ,
Are the beginning, the middle and the end,
Of everything; holding in them all the virtues enclosed.

Description
of the universal Spirit of the world.

Sonnet.

He is a first body spirit of Nature;
Very common, very hidden, very vile, very precious
Preserving, destroying, good and malicious:
Beginning and end of all creatures.
Triple in substance it is, of salt, of oil, and of pure water;
Which coagulates, collects and waters in low places
Everything is dry, creamy, and moist; of the high Heavens
Skilled in receiving every form and figure.
The only Art by Nature, in our eyes, makes it visible:
It conceals at its center an infinite power;
Equipped with the faculties of Heaven and Earth.
He is a Hermaphrodite; and gives increase
to Asset where it mixes indifferently;
Rightly so because it surrounds all germs within itself.

That the world is
Full of Spirit by which all things live.

Sonnet.

This great body, of the great God, the first creature,
Was filled with a Spirit from the beginning,
Omniform in seed; and lively in movement,
Which animates everything, and brings everything to light.
Of the earth and the Heavens it is the nourishing soul;
And everything that lives in them alike.
On earth it is vaporous, in Heaven fire properly;
Triple in one substance and first matter.
For from three, and in three, by Nature comes,
And returns every body, whose balm it contains;
Having as its progenitor the Sun and the Moon.
Through the air it germinates below, and seeks upwards:
The earth nourishes it in its warm belly:
And of perfections it is the common cause.

Of the corporification
of the general Spirit in all things: and of the conservation of the celestial and terrestrial virtues in it.

Sonnet.

Ethereal globes full of vigorous fire,
With a restless wheel the influence descends
On the body of the earth, and animal ardor
Pierces on all sides its great porous belly.
This belly then fills with other vaporous fire,
Constantly fed with a radical mood,
Which in these broad sides takes on the body of mineral water,
By the concoction of its warm fire.
This coagulable water generating all things,
becomes pure Earth, which in itself holds enclosed
By very firm union the virtues of the high Heavens. And so much so that in fact both the earth and the Sky are joined within it ;
by the beautiful name I call it,
From Terrified Sky, very worthy and precious.

From the Rise of this
General Spirit in Heaven, and of its descent to earth: and of the conformity of the two great purifiers, Divine and Natural.

Sonnet.

This great God who gives everything and keeps life,
Establishes as a remedy for souls and bodies
Two purifiers of all filth ords,
Whose corruption to vice invites them.
For the evils of both he provides and obviates,
Opening to them the treasures of earth and Heaven:
Very sovereign treasures against the hard efforts
What death full of envy does on the soul and body.
These are the two authors of the restorations;
Having earth and sky participation;
For the ends medium alliance.
This is why both are from Heaven descended
Down to earth and to Heaven flown again;
To come back down to earth with all power.

The forces of this
universal Spirit art, both in the limbo of its Chaos and in special bodies.

Sonnet.

In the general Spirit containing the seed
Both of death and of life, we must consider
Double force and must doubly admire
By juice or by venom, double in their essence.
The double juice maintains all bodies by its presence,
The double venom also makes all consume:
Preserving, destroying, by sweet and bitter salt,
Of a benign virtue, or of harsh vehemence.
These are his faculties before he was hatched
From the filthiness of his limb and Chaos;
Having even effects shot off on earth.
But when he has received the separation
Of juice and venom by preparation,
Then all good, against all evil, he makes mortal war.

Separations of
the pure substance from accidental impurities. And by what means are such separations made in all things.

Sonnet.

As for the ornament of the indigestible mass
Nature uses first of separation:
So all Art which aims at perfection,
Must follow this rule and manifest path.
The substance has for all the excrement which infects it
Either by terrestrial silt or by adustion,
But art by enema or calcination,
Using water, or fire, banishes this plague.
The art industry alone can separate
And by new life after regenerate
Everything in everything; from all vice exempting the pure soul.
Who therefore understands well the art of using water and fire,
Knows the two true paths which rise little by little
To the highest secrets of all Nature.

To the reader.
On the figure of the general Spirit of the world.

There is a part in man,
Whose name has six consonant letters;
To which a P adding,
Then S in M ​​permuting;
You will find without any ambiguity,
The true name of the subject of the wise.

treaty of the true secret salt of philosophers,
and of the universal Spirit of the World.

Book I.

That the World is lively, and full of life.

Chapter I.

Since I have undertaken to deal with the Spirit of the World it is necessary for me to recognize how the World is full of life: for apart from the fact that Nature spiritualizes nothing but vivifies it: and that the world consists of continual and indeficient alterations of forms, which cannot be done without vital movement; if we still see this Nature, as well as a very fertile and caring Mother, embracing and nourishing this world; leaving each of its members with a sufficient portion of life. So that there is nothing in the whole Universe that it does not try to bring to life; because it cannot be idle, it therefore remains always attentive to its action, which is to give life.

Now this great body is agitated and provided with a movement without rest: and this movement cannot take place without a vital spirit: because what is without life is necessarily immobile; not from place to place, by violent and forced movement; but from privation to form, or to put it more clearly, from imperfection to perfection. The vegetation to the plants, and the concretion to the stones, advance with movement, which is done by the infusion of this soul agitating this great mass, by means of a certain radical and nourishing Spirit: the source and Minière of which is seated at the center of the earth, great ancestor of all things; so that from there come and extend throughout the body (as from the heart) all vital functions. Now this root and mineral is enclosed in the ancient breast of the old Gemogorgon, universal progenitor that the ancient poets, very diligent inquisitors of natural secrets, ingeniously depicted wearing a green cape, enveloped in ferruginous rust, covered with obscure darkness, and nourishing all kinds of animals: in the belly of which the virtues of the celestial globes incessantly flow, penetrating the sides of the earth, which they enlarge with all kinds of omniform species.

Where likewise the elementary qualities and forces come to serve this old Father, as producer and specifier of all things perpetually embodied in the dispensation of specific forms by means of his Iliaste (Iliaste and the provider who provides the materials for generations), and to the excitation of vital heat, by its Archaeus (Archaeus is the fire or natural heat which digests and acts on said materials). Which Iliaste and Archaeus are like the two tools of the formation, conservation, and increase of things.

This Demogorgon is the one with whom the mediation is thought of God produced everything that is created in the heavens and below the heavens: so that by admirable adaptation unknown to the vulgar of Philosophers, and reserved by them to occult causes, containing in itself his Iliaste, and his Archaeus, he forms and generates everything; then nourishes and preserves what it generates: acting everywhere as steward and dispenser; establishing the store of its ammunition in the middle of the bowels of the earth, from where it draws and gives life and vigor to everything it produces, from the center to the circumference.

The earth therefore, as a receptacle of superior influences and virtues, has within itself the fountain of this vital soul, from the shoot from which flows to animals, minerals and plants the benefit of life, which their departure sentiment, essence, and vegetation, according to that it finds obedient matter, and disposed to movement. This is why animals composed of a mass that is more flexible and easy to move feel and vegetate; and for this cause easily generate their fellows, as if provided with sensitive and vegetative life. But plants, and all germinating things, whose Spirit is not stopped by the assembly of a matter that is completely filthy and hard, grow and increase, provided only with vegetative life: and go engendering their fellows through seed or translation: But not in the way of animals. Minerals have no sensitive or vegetative faculty, and only live an essential life; especially since their composition is harder than that of animals and plants; and their dirtier and coarser matter, which hinders and restricts too much this spirit which vivifies them, and by this means are prevented from being able to produce their like, if first purged of their gross impurity, they are not resolved in the subtlety of their first matter. Let's see what Augurel, excellent Philosophers and Latin Poet, says about it,

But everyone will ultimately believe
that Metals live secretly,
And that life they have the force and place
Divinely, as if a gift from God.
And what makes these valid Metals,
Do not seem to generate their fellows
Even less be so virtuous
To convert other things into them:
It is that the Spirit which gives whole life
Is prevented from too heavy matter:
And cannot to show the virtue
With which Nature has richly clothed him,
If human industry and living virtue
Does not make room for him, for the purpose that he lives:
And if the worker in extracting him does not stain
The thick material which hidden.

Then, no longer being impure and coarse minerals, they will generate by the specific form introduced into them, not their fellows, but in their fellows an alteration and perfection such as is attributed to this much sought after Elixir: that the wise admired for its divine virtues, and which fools despise, for not being able to penetrate with their fascinated eyes into the center of its wonders. If then the animals, minerals, and plants, which make up the majority of this visible world, are filled with life, what would it seem like to believe that the whole was poorer than its parts? What we will know even more truly about things in the superlunar world; because the celestial globes influence life on lower bodies, it is very necessary that they first received it from this universal soul, since one cannot give what one has. Hear Augurel.

Even it is said that the air, and earth and heavens
And of the sea the great spacious tower
Are internally excited
By a living soul, and generally
That by this soul has life everything
That we see under the enclosed sky,
And what is more, that by such a soul
The world lives, and its vigor comes from it.

Now movement (I mean natural) is always accompanied by life: how can one then produce both life and movement in others who have neither movement nor life in themselves? Movement never abandons what life has not yet abandoned: and what is always agitated and moving cannot be considered lifeless. The soul of the universe moving of itself, and source and origin of all corporeal movement, being ordinary companion of the body, which makes the very subtle part of this soul of the world seeking the high, and dwelling above, of a continual spinning wheel turns with the celestial globes, which it leads with a proper and endless orbicular movement: and for this cause all superior things are more vital, perfect, and participating in immortality, than other inferior ones: because that which is endowed with a non-failing life must necessarily be agitated by a movement returning to itself. And thus, that which is moved without end is consequently endowed with perpetual and indeterminable life. It therefore appears for these reasons that the universal world is universally filled with life. So much so that the life of each individual species is otherwise a life of the world; which alone can truly be called animal. In the corporeal elements of which are enclosed the occult seeds of all visible and corporeal things. For we see several bodies being born without express previous seeds; like plants, and without conjunction of male and female; Like certain animals bred from corruption.

The seeds of plants are visible down to the grain: and those of animals down to the offspring. Metals likewise have their seed; but it cannot be seen except by true Philosophers who know how to extract it from its proper place with great Art: and it can much rather be conjectured by reason than seen with bodily eyes. What if in the elements were not occultly contained a certain secret productive virtue, in which lies a potential faculty of engendering; several herbs would not come out of the ground, nor even from the walls higher, than have ever been sown or planted there, and of which there was no knowledge before. And so many diverse animals would not be generated in the earth and in the water, without previous copulation of the sexes, which nevertheless grow; and then by commixture of male and female produce their fellows for the perpetuity of their species; even if they are not begotten by such an assembly of parents. This is clearly demonstrated by the generation of eels, produced from silt: and flies, or creatures that we see born from the excrement of other animals.

What kind of life will it be said that oysters, sponges, and many aquatic things live, which better deserve the name of plant-animals than that of fish?

Now all these bodies do not live so much a life which is properly particular to them, as that of the universe, which is general and common: Which appears much more vigorous on earth to more subtle bodies, as being closer to the universal soul of the world; than in those who are cruder, or more distant from it. The World therefore having been created good by him who is goodness itself, is not only corporeal, but also partaker of intelligence; (for it is full of omniform ideas) and as I have already said, it has no member or part that is not vital. For this reason the wise men said it was animal; everywhere male and female; and join by mutual love and conjunction to its members; so covetous and eager is he for the marriage and liaisons of his parties. From there, by a translation, comes the diversity of the sexes in plants and animals, which mating together, following the example of the world, generate their fellows; no differently than the world itself which of itself produces an infinity of other little worlds.

For as much as bodies are generated in the world, so many are microcosms: seeing that there is no body, where the parts, virtues, and qualities of small worlds are not distinctly noticed. So that a fellow man willingly produces his fellow man, by adaptation of action and passion: which cannot truly be done without being full of life. Because what generation could come from a subject that we would consider dead? it being neither probable nor possible that what has no life can give it to some other. We see clearly that without the coupling of male and female, or even without one nor the other, several things are generated, to which by natural fomentation life is inspired, from the life of the universe: like some artificially hatch chickens, without the hen having incubated the eggs.

And others prepare certain materials, and make them putrefy, from which strange animals are generated, like Basil from a Rooster's egg, or from the menstruation of a red-haired woman: the Scorpion, from the herb called Basil: from the entrails of an ox the honey fly: branches or leaves of a certain tree falling into the sea, a species of birds similar to ducks: and so many other things unknown to us and to our world, more worthy of admiration than belief, for being outside the common train of nature, attracting the life of this universal life to certain matters, e, certain time and certain place: so much is the world full of compelling vivacity, and always in vital action. So that nothing dies in him, but rather than remaining without action, and consequently without life, he incessantly remakes one thing into another: and there is no body which is annihilated or totally perishes. Because if it were like this, all the parts of the world one after the other, and little by little, would disappear from our eyes, even for so many centuries, and so much mutation, I do not know if it would have some remains of it today. On this subject a certain Poet, not ignorant of this secret philosophy, speaking in the eyes of his mistress, said to them,

Your unequal aspect which changes my fortune,
Is like the Sun, contrary in its effects,
Which softens the wax, and hardens the mire ,
And makes new bodies from those he has undone.

---

That the World since it lives, has Spirit, Soul, and Body.

Chapter II.

The body of the world is familiarly known by the senses, but in it lies a hidden spirit, and in this spirit a soul, which can only be coupled to the body by means of it, for the body is gross, and the very subtle soul; removed from bodily qualities, from a long distance. It is therefore necessary for this coupling, a third party which is a participant in the Nature of the two, and which is body spirit, because the ends can only be assembled by the connection of some mediator, having such affinity to one and on the other, that each can meet its own nature. Heaven is high, Earth is low: one is pure, the other is corrupt. How then could we raise and join this heavy corruption to this agile purity, without a means participating in both? God is infinitely pure and clean: men are extremely impure and stained with sin: The reconciliation and rapprochement of which with God could never arrive without the intermediary of Jesus Christ, who truly God and man was the true magnet. Likewise, in the machine of the universe this spirit body, or spiritual body, is like a common agent, or cement of the conjunction of the soul with the body. Which soul is in the spirit and body of the world a lure and enticement of divine intelligence: for this intelligence is quite clearly seen there by effective elevations, renovations, mutations, variations, and multiplications of forms, which can only proceed from divine intelligence, and not of matter, which of itself is brute, and cannot cause any intelligent nature, to form and specify things.

The world is therefore nourished by this spirit, and agitated by the soul infused into it by means of this very spirit. What Virgil, following the doctrine of Plato, naively depicted in these verses.

The sky sown with fire, the earth, and floating,
The gleaming Stars, and the glowing Moon,
By an internal spirit are all nourished,
And the vivacity of a soul on all sides,
By the infused members moves the whole mass
And mingles with the large body which both embraces.

Augurel in his imitation.

Since it is therefore a well-assured thing
that the soul is incorporated into the body of the world;
To believe it is fitting that in the midst of these two
Lies a powerful and vigorous spirit,
Who must neither body nor soul say;
But which of the two participates, and
only can reduce these two ends into one,
By its effects which are in all very limited.

That everything that has essence and life is made by the Spirit of the world: And of the first matter.

Chapter III.

Things are nourished by what they are made of. It is seen that everything breathes, lives, grows, and is nourished by this spirit infused into the world: it dissolves and dies when it fails. It follows therefore that everything is made of him; which is nothing other than a simple subtle essence, which philosophers call quinte, because it can be separated from bodies as from a filthy and coarse matter, and from the superfluity of the four elements: and when it has marvelous operations. Now it is infused by all parts of the world, and by it the virtue of the soul expands and becomes vigorous: Which virtue is mainly poured out and given to the bodies which have more attracted and participated in this Spirit, being sent and flowing from 'at the top, that is to say from the Sun, which truly produces the quality of matter in essence: So much so that this spirit, heated by the action of the Sun, acquires great abundance of life, multiplying and vivifying the seeds of all things, which grow and increase up to the determined magnitude, according to the species and form of the thing. For this cause Virgil truly said:

That the igneous vigor and celestial origin
Is in each seed, and in it dominates.

This spirit therefore (by the philosophers is called Mercury) because it is multiform, even omniform, making the production of all bodies, expands a life to some more clear and incorruptible, and to others more confused, and subject to corruption and failure; according to the predisposition of the material. Thus this vigor of fire which comes from the solar rays is not all one in everything and everywhere, but is diversified according to the more or the less which is at the seeds of things. All matters therefore of clearer and purer predisposition have the spirit and life more durable and incorruptible: for everything delighting willingly in its like, it is very fitting that this celestial heat which is very pure, enters and penetrates into the bodies as much and more profoundly as they are purer, and makes them more durable, vital, and incorruptible.

The proof of this is shown in gold, which being the cleanest and purest of all terrestrial bodies, participates most in this celestial heat and fire, which piercing the earth finds predisposed gold materials in mining, namely its Mercury, and its sulfur, (which Ezra calls powder) prepared according to the power of action and diligence of nature, by depuration and separation of all filth and earthly feculencies full of adustion. Which material is initially a sperm or a water mixed with this very pure powder or sulfur, which little by little aided by its own coagulating virtue thickens and hardens by the long action of continued heat. As long as it is in the end brought to its perfection, which is simple in nature, and dyed with an igneous color: for truly heat is the mother of dyes. If it is therefore taken for certain that this heat comes from the Sun, who will be the enemy of truth and reason who wants to debate that the Sun is not the author and father of perfection? let us therefore rise a little higher, and inquire exactly how this can be done.

How the Sun is said by Hermes father of the Spirit of the world, and of Matter.

Chapter IV.

But (someone will tell me) since all things come from the same matter, how can it be that the Sun is the father of matter, seeing that from it he himself was created? To answer this question we must understand that if we look at this first and foremost matter of all things we will find it invisible, and which can only be understood by deep and vivid imagination: from the Sun and vital fire of which, in it naturally innate , the celestial Sun came out and rose full of light and of the same igneous vigor, which subsequently deploying this internal and essential heat, accompanied by this natural heat, spreads the rays of its fire throughout the roundness of the world; illuminating the stars above, and vivifying all things below.

Now because the earth is like the common matrix of all things, the Sun acts mainly in it as the receptacle of all influences: within which are hidden the seeds of all things, which are stirred and carried by the heat of the solar rays come into light. This is why we see in Winter when the Sun has moved away from us, that the earth languishing by the deprivation of its perpendicular rays, and by this means devoid of sufficient heat, remains sterile: but when the Sun is renewed comes back to us by its ordinary route, then it regains life and vigor as if resurrected. The only cause of this change is this spirit of the universe, very full of soul and life, inhabiting mainly on the earth. Which before being able to generate must necessarily dwell and remain in some body, namely in the earth, which is like the body of all bodies. And because all things are nourished and nourished by what they are made of, this spirit is very animated by the Sun, and for this reason the ancient sages did not say without reason that the Sun comes in Spring to warm and revive its aggravated father of old age, and languishing half dead, by the cold of winter.

Since he is strengthened and revived by the Sun, it is not without reason that we say with Hermes that the Sun is his father without whom he would otherwise be ungenerable, and could not grow or multiply, and all the more so. more than the influx heat of the stars comes from the Sun and imprints the earth, which having conceived, generates, extends, and multiplies this spirituous matter; bringing it from incorporeality to corporeity.

Hortulain, who commented on the table of Hermes, abandoning the radical principles of nature, and descending to the particular principles of Alchemy, understands by the Sun, the philosopher's gold, which he says is the father of the stone: which is right. For those enlightened in this art know by experience, and have learned it from all the good authors (of whom the number is infinite) that in the true matter and subject of the stone are in potential gold and silver, and quicksilver in nature. Which gold and silver are better than those which we commonly see and touch, because they are alive, and can vegetate and grow, and the vulgar are dead. And if it were not like this, matter would never achieve the extreme perfection that art gives it. Which perfection is so great that it perfects imperfect metals almost miraculously, as Hermes says. And yet this invisible gold and silver which through the magisterium are exalted to such a high degree, could not communicate this perfection to the imperfect, without the ministry of vulgar gold and silver.

This is why the Masters add them to the fermentation: thus gold is always the father of the Elixir. But those who desire to confirm themselves in this truth must endeavor to read the good books: for it is not my intention to speak of it further here: because I only intend to make it known that the divine Hermes has the same person must want to touch both strings; as he clearly declares when he says that he is called Mercury three times great, as having the three parts of the wisdom of all the world: meaning that having anatomized this general spirit, which is material author and principle of three genres, which are the whole of this great world, he had the sapience and universal science, by which nothing was more unknown to him. Having also said from the beginning; and as all things proceed from one through the mediation of one, so all things are born from this one thing by adaptation.

Now this one from which all things proceed, is the general Spirit of which I want to deal: And this unique thing of which he says that miracles will be perpetrated, is the true mineral matter of the stone, of which I spoke above : which is procreated by Nature in the earth from this first general matter: or universal spirit: which spirit containing in itself all the celestial virtues in potential, communicated to this mineral matter as much as was necessary to give it being perfect for which it was intended. So resuming my first wanderings, and moving away from Chemical paths as much as the subject will allow me, I will say that this general spirit is the stone, and the Elixir, which nature has composed, and from which it perpetrates all its miracles , much more worthy of admiration than those of the Chemical stone, to which it is only enlarged by this very Spirit, to act in its like; to introduce what was bothering him: Because being truly metallic, purified and accomplished by art, it purifies and accomplished the impure metals which have remained imperfect, due to lack of digestion.

But this physical stone perpetually reproduces the things which have already had a beginning, and at each moment creates new ones, as much in the animal, vegetable, and mineral types. Which it could not do without the help and favor of the celestial bodies, and especially the Sun; source and principle of all virtues and generations. It therefore has the Sun as its father, and contains spiritual gold and silver, since it is the first matter of the first matter of corporeal gold and silver, and because the air is the means by which it receives the superior virtues, Hermes says that the wind carried it to his belly: for which reason Raymond Lulle calls it Aerial Mercury. The first parent earth nourishes it in its fertile womb: which is proven by the production of everything that comes out of the earth: for if this spirit were not enclosed there, it would have no strength or power to generate and produce, being properly only the vessel or matrix of so many generations and diverse productions. This general matter, to which the name Mercury is given, being, according to the words of the wise, invisible and almost incorporeal, cannot be corporified or brought into view except by subtle artifice.

That if it is extracted from the womb of its nursing mother, then purged of all accidental superfluities, and prepared according to art; Who will prevent it from separating from the bodies, to which it will be administered, the corrupting things which are dissimilar to it: and from preserving and multiplying that which is conformable to it? seeing that all the celestial forces and worldly virtues work together.

It is certain that the misinterpreted authors all seem to command or advise that metals be used alone to make metals: saying that in gold alone are the seeds of gold. Sentence, or even judgment without appeal. But apart from what I have already said recently about the difference between common metals, and those which they intend to be taken for their magisterium; still I will take the audacity to affirm that without this general Spirit which is the only cause of vegetation in all things, this faculty of aurifying or argentifying which is in these metallic bodies, both vulgar and secret and occult, could not vegetate nor achieve power in fact; especially since nature does not produce itself; and that in every operation there must be an agent and a matter capable of its action; and it is this fire of which Pontanus speaks that the wise have all hidden as the only key to their secrets, without which he has failed two hundred times (he says) in the operation on true matter. This triple or supreme universal Mercury is therefore the first seed of all metals, as well as of the two other genera: which coagulates and hardens little by little by the action of the continuous heat which is within the mines, and receives the dye being perfectly purified. But it is specified in various kinds, and takes various forms and colors, according to the place and the adjacent matter: making metals, minerals, and stones within the earth; and all kinds of trees and plants on the surface; according to whether it is animated by the rays of the Sun; without which it would remain ungenerable: because from the beginning Nature established this Law that the Sun perpetually heated and nourished matter; so that its triple animal, vegetable and mineral virtue was constantly turned and brought to effect: and this is why Hermes writes that the Sun is his father.

How the Moon is mother of the Spirit of the world and of universal matter.

Chapter V.

To prevent us from being disappointed here, we must consider that as we have body and spirit, and soul; also has this great universe. Of which three parts there being no thing which is devoid of them, it is a necessary consequence that they are always associated together; so that one is never without the other, that if sometimes it seems that the two are separated, they are nevertheless hidden in the third which remains; as the subtle and profound artist would know well how to know and see in each body by the examination of fire. What is therefore matter is also spirit: and what is spirit can without impertinence be called body, having regard to the fact that they are indivisible and generated by the law of Nature to be only one and the same thing: by that matter is not only body, soul or spirit, but it is all three together, one with the other generated and nourished, so that in the propagation and action of one, the other two are find.

When we therefore say that the Moon is the mother of spirit and universal matter, we do not speak without apparent reason; and there is nothing absurd: But we must show where this maternity comes from. Heat and humor are the two keys to every generation: heat acting as a mass, and humor that of a female: By the action of heat on humidity, corruption is firstly effected; which is followed by the generation. This appears in the small vessel of an egg; in which the sperm putrefies by the heat of fomentation; then after the chicken coagulates and forms, the same happens in the generation of man, who is brought to a body accomplished in all its parts, by the assembly of two sperms, one masculine and the other feminine, inside the womb, using the natural heat of the woman.

I here call corruption the change and passage from form to form, which cannot happen without the means of putrefaction, which is the true path of generation; which is procured and advanced by certain Mercury or quicksilver, as special bearer and conductor of the vegetative virtue.

The seeds of all bodies are aqueous, as if full of the humor of their Mercury. That if their innate heat is drawn from potency to act by the external heat of the Sun, then by decoction generation takes place. Which made the ancient philosophers say that the Sun and man generate, namely the Sun, the terrestrial Sun, which is gold: and man, man, it is a manifest thing that fire elementary is as if dead and ungenerable without solar fire: which means that the Sun is customarily called lord of life and generation. Heat therefore in all generation of things comes from the Sun; but the humidity that we call radical is fomented by the Lunar influence, which all things receive and feel, being altered and changed by the movements of this star, in its crescent or decline. This is why Hermes said that the Moon is the mother of universal matter, and the Sun its father; for the heat of the Sun and the humidity of the Moon generate all things, because the heat and the humor having taken temper conceive, and from this conception everything is born and receives life. And although fire and water are contrary, yet one could not benefit without the other, but by their various action everything is conceived and conceived.

Thus in the universe discordance concord
To generations becomes fit and grants.

However, I want to give this advantage to those who reading this chapter could make a bad judgment of me hastily, on the fact that I detract the main intention of Hermes from the great physical path to throw it on the path that I hold: knowing well that according to his precept, all good Philosophers want their Sun to be conjunct their Moon, to create the necessary generation through their conjunction. Because as Arnault de Villeneuve says in his flower of flowers, their sperm does not join with their body, except by means of their Moon, and this Moon is not common silver, but the true material of stone, which assembles in its womb, and inseparably retains the body, which is the Sun, and the sperm, which is Mercury. And it is from this Moon that he speaks in his new light, saying that apart from the master who taught him the work, he had never seen anyone working on the true material: but that everyone went astray and extravagated in the choice of things, as if from a dog they wanted to generate a man.

That the root of the Spirit of the world is in the air.

Chapter VI.

The wind is nothing other than a moving and agitated air: as it is recognized by the respiration of animals, since breathing by the benefit of the air, they throw wind. The wind is therefore air and the air is everywhere vital and a spiracle of life, seeing that without air no thing can live: because what is deprived of it or suffocated dies immediately, and even plants which do not have the open and free air become feeble and languid in respecting others.

We therefore do not say in vain that air is a vital spirit, passing through and penetrating everything, giving life and consistency to everything, binding, moving and filling all things. By which air is generated and makes manifest this general spirit enclosed and hidden in all things: being imprinted and engrossed by the air which makes it more powerful to generate. So much so that Calid, a Jewish philosopher, was right to say that the origins of things have their roots in the air and their heads or tops in the earth. As if he were saying that the air is the cause of this Spirit vegetating, increasing, and multiplying its minerality in the earth. Although experts in the preparation of the stone of the wise can say that Calid understands this passage differently: because according to everyone's doctrine, there are two parts in the work, the volatile one which rises in the form of vapor , which resolves and condenses into water, which they call spirit, and the other more fixed, which remains at the bottom of the vessel, which they call body: taking this volatile part for air, as it is in truth , and fixes it for the earth.

Rozinus wanted to explain this passage by another from the same author where he says: Take the things of their souls, and exalt them in high places; Harvest them from the tops of their mountains, and restore them to their roots. Laglose says that these words are clear, true, without any dullness or ambiguity: and yet that he did not name the things he heard about. Now by the mountains (he says) the wise man wanted to signify the pots or cucurbits, and by the summits of them the copings or stills: To harvest, according to the similarity, is to raise the water of the above-mentioned things in the vessel: putting back on the roots is allowing said water to fall back onto the earth from which it came. Which is confirmed by Morien, when he says that the whole operation of the wise is nothing other than the extraction of water from the earth, and the return of water to the earth, until as long as the earth rots: for this earth rots with this water, and becomes worldly, which being worldly with the help of God will direct and perfect the whole magisterium.

Some speaking of air did not place it in the ranks of the other Elements, but considered it as some glue or cement uniting their various natures, even considered it to be the spirit and instrument of the world. , because it is the origin, and bearer of our universal Spirit. For he soon conceives the influences of all the celestial bodies, and communicating them to the other Elements and to mixed bodies, he nevertheless still receives and retains, like a divine mirror, the species and forms of all natural things: which carry with him, and entering through the pores of animals, it imprints on them, whether they are waking or sleeping. We learn from animals and plants that every spirit which is properly attached to the earth takes its strength and virtue from the air, because we see them grow and rise upwards, so much does this spirit which gives them life covet the air, as well as the place of its own origin. Also Hermes said that the wind, that is to say the air, carried him in his belly. To which Aristotle agrees, saying that moist things are made of air, and terrestrial things of moist: because the air being very close to the body of the earth, it is moistened on all sides, and this humor thickened by the native heat, turns into a certain nature of earth, which contains in itself Mercury and Sulfur, duly proportioned.

How the Earth nourishes this universal Spirit.

Chapter VII.

Although this Spirit is infused and resides in both lower and higher things, yet it can be more clearly and easily seen and known in the nearer body. Now the closest and vegetal of all bodies is that of the earth. In it therefore it is generated and manifests more, not without great reason: for the earth is like the white and the mound of all the celestial influences and superior virtues, in which all the stars release and launch their rays. She is also the foundation and basis of all elements, containing in herself the seeds and seminal virtues of all things, which is why she is called the Common Mother of animals, plants, and minerals. Being therefore enlarged by the heavens and the other Elements, it produces from its womb all things.

Now let this Spirit be torn from it, washed, separated as much as we wish; if we leave this earth thus stripped for some time in the air, it will be enlarged and impregnated as before by the virtues and forces of heaven, producing again certain crystalline stones, and shiny sparks: and this Spirit which we will think to be at all separated, will always re-sprout. By which the impregnation made by the action of the heavens and the primary qualities makes it continually generative, because from it comes everything that is below the circle of the Moon. It produces all things that have life, preserves them, nourishes them, then finally resolves and transmutes them into itself. Now being agitated by the above-mentioned actions, she releases a double exhalation both outside and within herself: which exhalations come out of this earthly Spirit, imprinted and heated by celestial heat. From the expiration which rises outside this earth, if it is humid, will be generated drizzles or clouds: and if it is dry, it will produce winds, thunderbolts, and other such dry impressions of the air . But from that which remains enclosed and constricted within it, if it is humid, all liquefiable things will be made, such as metals and minerals. And if, on the contrary, it is dry and arid, it will produce non-fusible things, such as stones and other similar materials. Besides this, all vegetable things come from it, and receive nourishment from this Spirit which the earth nourishes. This is why ancient poets called this land great ancestor and nurse of all things.

That this Spirit of the world is the cause of perfection in everything.

Chapter VIII.

The Spirit of the universe is the general and common genus of all genus: for if we look at the lower or elementary world, we will find it divided into three subordinate ones, namely the vegetable, the animal, and the mineral: however he is always one in each thing, but he operates differently according to the diversity of species. Hence comes this infinite variety of creatures: Otherwise it would be necessary by necessity that there be only one species of things in the whole universe. But if we look at the higher and celestial world, we will also find that this Spirit there is one and the same in everything: differing only in purification and subtlety. For from its pure igneous substance were made these celestial Spirits and very distant from the lower bodily thickness. And from the medium airy substance, the celestial globes and their luminaries were composed. Now he therefore made all things, because he has the virtues of higher and lower things, because of his exquisite temperature, because this one body, among all, is the beginning and end of perfection: and if the virtues were lacking in him, he wouldn't perfect anything. However, here we call perfection simple and natural.

Whereby being only perfect according to the intention of nature, containing in itself the rule, line, action and power of perfection, it nevertheless acquires so great force over natural things, that it attracts everything from power to action , it alters everything: and penetrates everything, however thick it may be: softens hard things, hardens soft things: and finally increases, nourishes, and preserves everything. This Spirit therefore being in all bodies, author of generation and corruption, is necessarily of triple operation, because by its dryness it vivifies, by its coldness it freezes, and by its humor it gathers and assembles. For this reason it was given the name of triple earth, or triune, namely vivifying, salufuginous, and mercurious: for everything that is made in the world is made of Salt, Glass, and Mercury, although the principles of Paracelsus are Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury: and let the glass be put for the fourth, as if it meant that all things composed of these first three, are reduced to a quarter for their last end: as much as glass can no longer be made in any production, by the industry of Nature, not of Art.

But I want to prove my opinion by the following example and reason: saying that in animals the bones are consolidated and hardened by vitrification: the flesh and the nerves are concreted by Salt, and gathered together by the Mercurious humor. As for vegetables, the shells of almonds, pine nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, and all kinds of kernels, can similarly be said to be vitrified: as well as the shells of turtles, snails, oysters, and similar animals that the land and sea produce. The taste alone gives sufficient proof that they are indeed salty, for nothing is without salt except that which is without taste. And we even get salt from it, from which glass is made, like fern, salicot or soda, and many other things. Someone could therefore object that it would be the salt and not the glass which would be the cause of the hardness of the bones, cockles, and shells of animals and plants that I have just alleged.

To which I will respond that experience is repugnant to it, and reason too: in that all salt is melted and dissolved by the slightest humidity of the air or water that they receive; all the above-mentioned things resist it; according to the more or less they have been hardened by this vitrifying virtue, as final proof of which I will represent here diamonds, precious stones, and crystals, which are nothing more than glasses produced to such perfection in the furnace of ingenious Nature. And that all these things are condensed by the mood of Mercury is so manifest that there is no need to give any other testimony than common experience. The minerals are sufficiently provided with Salt, Sulfur, and Mercury. Stones, and everything that comes from the earth, which lacks fusion and extension under the hammer, do have some salt in them, but it is overcome by the addition of corrupting sulfur which intervenes in vitrification and hardening of cells. Metals, and all melting and ductile things, are created and condensed by Salt and Mercury, not without vitrification, which hardens them and makes them indocile to the hammer: according however to the more or less impurity and adustible earthiness which is present. is encountered at the thickening and coagulation of their Mercury.

In this way we can truly say that all things are made, as if of a triad, of Glass, Salt, and Mercury or water: the glass causing the hardness, the salt giving the matter, and the water making the hardness. assembly and condensation. but it is overcome by the addition of corrupting sulfur which intervenes in the vitrification and hardening of these. Metals, and all melting and ductile things, are created and condensed by Salt and Mercury, not without vitrification, which hardens them and makes them indocile to the hammer: according however to the more or less impurity and adustible earthiness which is present. is encountered at the thickening and coagulation of their Mercury. In this way we can truly say that all things are made, as if of a triad, of Glass, Salt, and Mercury or water: the glass causing the hardness, the salt giving the matter, and the water making the hardness. assembly and condensation. but it is overcome by the addition of corrupting sulfur which intervenes in the vitrification and hardening of these. Metals, and all melting and ductile things, are created and condensed by Salt and Mercury, not without vitrification, which hardens them and makes them indocile to the hammer: according however to the more or less impurity and adustible earthiness which is present. is encountered at the thickening and coagulation of their Mercury. In this way we can truly say that all things are made, as if of a triad, of Glass, Salt, and Mercury or water: the glass causing the hardness, the salt giving the matter, and the water making the hardness. assembly and condensation.

From the specification of the Spirit of the universe to bodies.

Chapter IX.

The Soul of the world, and its action, is represented in all things, in which they are all conformed.

It binds and joins together higher and lower things. For as many ideas as there are in the heavens, so many seminal causes and reasons it has, of which by means of this spirit it forges as many species in matter. Therefore, if it sometimes happens that each of the species degenerates, the soul which is within it can be reformed and reduced to its first state by means of this spirit of the world which is very close to it, obedient to all manner of movement. However, let us not think that this ideal intellect is attracted, but rather the soul endowed with its virtues, and attracted by material forms. Which should not seem strange, because she herself makes herself the meat and the bait, as if transmutable into all the things by which she is attracted and solicited; remaining and always residing voluntarily in these areas. Zoroaster calls these congruities and decency of forms with the reasons of the soul of the world, enticements. By this it appears that each thing and species draws its gifts and virtues from the soul of the world; not all entirely, but those of the seed, and other conforms, by which it germinates and proliferates. The example is seen and noted in man, who feeding only on human food, does not acquire the nature of the birds or fish he has eaten, but rather the human nature suitable to his species.

It also happens that sometimes several other animals live on the same food and meat, from which each nevertheless attracts what is specific to its species. So that it is a truly admirable thing that from the same meat man draws what is proper to man; and the bird and the animal what is suitable for the birds and the animals. Now this is done, not because in one and the same meat there are various and variable foods; but by reason of the species which is nourished, which attracts and transforms in itself its conformal food, by means of which it generates its fellow, because of the virtue of this soul and seminal reason which it has in itself, according to its quality. Furthermore, we must not consider that in the machine of the world, the spirit, the soul, and the body, are some separate things, because these three always unite and bind together, as we see in the man, and by this union make the vital spirit whole, and the bodily substance.

The soul of the universe therefore pretends and imagines various forms of species, which the spirit receiving in the bowels of the Elements corporifies, and produces in light. This is why animals only beget animals; plants plants and minerals minerals. Not, however, in everything in the same way, because minerals, as I said above, do not generate their like in the same way as plants; because the spirit they possess is stopped and oppressed by too coarse and heavy matter; which spirit, in the event that it is once taken from it and added to the mineral matter, it will be able to generate its like: especially since having acquired intrusion and entry into imperfect bodies, by the great subtiliation of Art, and graduation of fire, he drew from the universal soul his own mineral seeds only; not those of animals, nor of plants: especially since this was repugnant to Nature. Not that I mean to say that he does not have in himself the action of the other virtues; But it only demonstrates them according to the species in which it is adapted. Otherwise each thing would have to produce something unlike it; namely, that man begot a tree: the plant made an ox, and the metal an herb. This I only say with regard to the specification of things: because if we consider this general genus, (as Raymond Lulle calls it) to something that we yawn it will make its similar, because it is Mercury , and attributes to itself the nature of everything with which it is mixed. But human art cannot do what is granted to Nature alone: ​​which generates and procreates the species, which Art subsequently expands and multiplies; if the beginning of the operation is taken from the root of the species: as all prudent Physicists know how to do well, who drawing from the minerals this Spirit already begins to specify, after having duly purified it and led it to perfection, make it capable to perfect the imperfect. These things examined exactly, the expert and wise artist will draw admirable adaptations.

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Second Book.

That the Spirit of the world takes shape, and how it becomes corporified.

Chapter. I.

I consider that I have sufficiently made it known in the preceding book that by the general Spirit all things are not only produced; but corporified in the universe but it remains to declare what body this spirit takes, & in what way it becomes corporified by corporifying all other things. For it is necessary that, taking from himself alone all their bodies, he himself be corporeal, not being reasonable to believe that he can give what he would never have had. Let us therefore see in what body he is clothed and in what manner he is clothed with it. Not that it is, however, my intention to discuss here the corporification of celestial and supernatural things, but only to attach my discourse to the physical, sublunary generations, and to the body of the earth which is the vessel and its own matrix or this first and general corporifier of things, he himself corporifies. I therefore say that no corporification can be done without a preceding motor, which draws the power into action, so that what seems to be not, strong in light & reaches the end & accomplishment of the intention of Nature; which is always to corporify what it wants to produce.

Now this engine is nothing other than fire, or heat which moves first in the air: For all generations begin there; especially since fire is the most active of all the Elements, and consequently more subtle and light, more ready to move. This fire therefore, whose property is to fly upwards because of its lively lightness, and to make unknown things visible, necessarily takes the source of its movement & action from below, that is to say from the center of the world, where we previously housed the old Demogorgon, progenitor of all things; being seated as if on his throne in the very middle of his Empire: so that from there he governs, commands, maintains, and distributes on all sides the essence of life to all this great spherical body, roundly extended around him, so that 'everyone receives in each member what they need, more easily and at an equal distance.

Within the fertile womb of this ancient father is implanted the root of this fire; which makes it a vaporous breath, which Hermes in his Pimander calls Humid Nature. Because steam is the first and next action of fire; with which she is so united that one cannot even imagine it without her. But (someone will say) since this vapor comes from the fire, how is it humid, given that the fire is hot & dry? & where can this contrary quality come from? There is nothing strange here if we want to consider that it is impossible for fire to live or be without humor, which is its food, maintenance, &; subject without which even fire cannot be imagined. Because since it is natural to act, & that its action is deficient; it is necessary that he acts on something: and that even this thing never fails him.

So fire & co-essential humidity are like the male & female of every generation; & the first parents of the corporification of this Spirit of the world: as will be seen below. But fire is like the first operative; especially since action always precedes passion. As much as what suffers inseparably coexists with what acts: As the stoic Zeno once said, estimating that the substance of fire, through the air converted into water, & preserved in ice, like a general sperm, from which then afterwards all things are generated, was the first matter of the universe. Thales Millesian, whom the Greeks honor with the name of sage, stopping at patient matter, estimated that it was water: which Heraclitus also called Sea: And Moses, more enlightened than these two, said that the Spirit of God was carried on the waters before the creation of heaven & earth: Naming fire because of its noble, pure, & worthy essence, the Spirit of God.

When I therefore say that fire is the principle of things, I will not depart from reason nor from truth: For without doubt it is the first worker: & the last destroyer & shaper of the forms which it had caused: until 'as long as he has reduced things to their period & matter: beyond which there is no more progression, but rather transformation: as I will clarify later by the comparison of visible & familiar things. The first active power which operates in the production of man is the agitation or motion of heat: Which by imitating the action of fire, from which the natural thing is principally to separate, draws from the whole body what the we call sperm, (in which the potential human seed is contained) which it cooks & digests to be made suitable for expulsion, then for generation: or perfect increase of the whole man. Which generation & increase is always aided & conducted by fire, which is the only operator: until arriving at the goal of its exaltation, & too inflamed by the sulfur of the excrement proceeding from the impurity of the food, it dries up the 'humid radical, which is the seat & preserver of life.

This done, this fire itself does not cease its action until it has converted the bodies into ashes by resolution and corruption, which can only be done by it alone. But to make this more easily heard, and touch it with the finger, so that by knowing the last matter of this body we know the first; Let us put it in the common fire, we will immediately see that it has something inflammable which consumes almost everything, and reduces it to a little ash; which we see of igneous nature, & nourish in its last subject & matter a pure salt, of which fire alone is the unique father & multiplier. And whatever burning we can do with it, nothing succeeds except salt, which has its own fire inside; hidden, who rejoices with his fellow man. This is why the spagyrics have experimented that in salt there is an incombustibility or secret element of fire which has the same actions of this primitive fire, being for this cause called balm of the bodies: especially since it has in it this which gives, increases, & preserves life: which is otherwise a moist vapor, accompanied by temperate heat. Jean de la Fontaine in his Philosophical Novel testifies that he was not ignorant of this mystery, when he tells Nature:

Some say that fire does not generate
From its nature only ashes:
But their reverence saved
Nature is in the ancient fire:
And if I wanted to prove it
, Salt as a witness I will take.

Now to judge that it is equipped with humor, we must only consider the easy resolution: & to prove that it is full of heat, we must otherwise observe its prompt freezing, in which it is easy to notice that the fire acts and unites with fire, as in liquefaction air was united with air. For in what way could the dry drink up the humid in a subject, if heat were not innate there, since naturally the humor is drunk by the dryness proceeding from heat? By this we can easily understand that Demogorgon, which is the Central fire, is not deprived of humidity, on which acting within its own bosom, it raises a vapor mixed with the two qualities, which I call the Spirit of the world: & which many call Mercury of the Mercurys, because all the others proceed universally from him. This rising vapor is therefore not yet body, but rather an average thing between body and spirit, as a participant in one and the other substance, which remaining thus, could not generate any thing. It must therefore take some body, or form of body: Which is done in this way.

The very subtle vapor coming from the dry and the humid, coming to rise penetrates the sponginess of the earth, in which little by little it is converted into mercurial water by the encounter it makes with the infused air, & of the earth itself, therefore the surface is greatly removed from the center, which is the hearth from which this heat leaves: just like in the cover of an alembic where the spirit & distillable vapor liquefies. Now because this vapor & its water participate in the two principles, namely heat & humidity, it grows & thickens little by little by moderate & continual decoction, the main instrument & means of which is this innate fire that this very inducing vapor contains , even forcing by its diligent action, the dry to drink its wet, and to freeze this water, not with a solidity or hardness in all and everywhere similar, but firstly mucilaginous, and different.

What Nature claims to do by informing Ideas to mucilage is the beginning of induration & solidity; Which must necessarily follow the path of Nature, which is to pass from one to the other extremity by the average disposition. Nature therefore continuing its digestion, this mucilage strengthens; And from the larger material or part metallic bodies are generated in the veins of the earth & concavities of the rocks. Which bodies generated from the same seed do not differ in any way in substance, but only in the accidents that happen to them according to the arrangement of the places or matrices in which they are generated. What is most subtle in this vapor rising readily, finally reaches the surface of the earth, where she is forced to stop. And all the more so since it cannot remain silent, and nevertheless cannot descend, nor rise higher because, being a spirit, it is its own to rise; & that not finding anything solid that could support it; It is necessary that it continues the intention of Nature, and is used for the generation and corporification of individuals.

But in order that all that I have already said may be heard more clearly; let us take one of these individuals, and to give an absolute conclusion to this chapter, let us see how it is procreated; For this will make us certain that this Spirit of the world takes shape, and will reveal to us how it is corporified. The acorn sown in the earth would remain forever useless, or would be consumed without germinating, if there were not some agent who brought into action the occult power that Nature has lodged there. Where could we imagine this action if not from the central fire emerging from the heart of this Demogorgon, which fire, attracted & fomented by the rays of the celestial Sun, redoubles its strength & vigor? Does not this germination then have its beginning with this fire of Nature, which raising and multiplying its vapor collects and excites the innate fire within the glans, which for its part also vaporizes by means of its own air, then having begun to vaporize, it feeds & increases on this first vapor, which never fails or ceases to act on the material of the glans until it is at the period of perfection for which Nature's intention has intended it. , which is to be made into an oak: which in its time having reached its natural size, begins (not properly to die) but rather to move towards decline to return to its first form; & convert into that of the earth, where this vapor is not lacking & is never idle: Because it generates in the rotting of the tree certain Polipodes, with an infinity of cattle & vermin: or else having reduced the oak to earth, it begins again with some other vegetation.

To think of saying that the mass of the acorn increases and multiplies it, there would be an error: For in germination it is seen that it remains entirely, and separates from its germ without any reduction or diminution, and nevertheless the tree came out. It is therefore not by the multiplication & increase of the acorn that the oak is generated: It is also little by addition, & distraction of the adjacent earth, because as much earth would be exhausted as the tree could be large , which is not happening. It is therefore necessary that it be by some other means and matter, since it is neither by one nor the other of those. Now this spirit or vapor alone being employed, it is this alone which is corporified and made individual, and from there comes the creation, increase, and conservation of all things, not terrestrial masses which are only the excrement of spirituous and primary matter. As it is seen in the digestion of the stomach, which rejects the excrement at the same weight and quantity of meat that it took in: having nevertheless drawn its own and particular food, which was nothing other than this spirit enclosed in the mass of these: which alone by its dryness is corporified, & by its humidity expands & increases, pushed & driven by its own heat.

Of the conversion of this Spirit into earth: & how in this earth its virtue remains entire.

Chapter II.

For the reasons already deduced being my opinion sufficiently proven that the Spirit of the world takes body, it is necessary here to declare how it is corporified. And although many have worked a lot and made very little progress in this research, I will try to make it palpable and visible to those mainly who, favored by a happy birth, admirers of the rare effects of Nature, try to enter the cabinet of its secrets. . Because what disappointed so many curious minds in the search and discovery of this body was that some considered this knowledge of the whole outside the faculty of man's common sense, and reserved only for Angels or demons. Other than calling it the Spirit of the world, one should imagine no other body than that of the universe; seeing that a general spirit requires a universal body. The others, that one could only perceive it by the conversion of more perfect bodies into their first spirit & sperm, by an exact & laborious subtiliation, not realizing that there is no regression in Nature : & that the more perfect the bodies are, the further they are from their beginnings & first corporeality.

Still others thought that it was necessary to extract from bodies what they call quintessence, believing that what was more subtle and volatile was the spirit they were looking for: and thus moving away from the goal at which they were most aiming, wanted to find the Orient at the sunset: Because they spiritualized the bodies instead of corporifying the spirits. But since this mind clearly sees it turned into a body of earth; and that without contradiction or doubt all bodies are generated from him; We must therefore draw it from themselves; especially since it would be an infinite deviation from the right path of Nature if, instead of making an earthly body, we made one of fire, which the quintessentials call their Heaven. Now the beginning of corporification in all things is through the earth; Because it is the first or next operation of Mercury to be terrified. So why do they want to start with significance? This is just like starting a building with the roof and not with the foundations.

Those who tend towards the reduction of bodies in their first germ would have a more apparent reason in their design than the latter who want to quintessence, if they did not take in this progress a tortuous path which leads them to the opposite of the place where they aspire. Because apart from the fact that Nature never retrogrades, they do not realize that they are following the path of accomplishment, and not of the destructive reversion, or to put it more clearly, which leads back to birth. But besides, that these labors are at all impossible; or at least so difficult & long that the ordinary life of man would not be sufficient, they could not by this path arrive at the true and natural reduction, but would only be a base, fanciful body, greatly removed from that with which Nature begins all its productive operations, which is the only and legitimate sperm of all bodies. If we consider that everything is corporified by terrifying, we will necessarily admit that there is some preexisting subject, and soon capable of being terrified: Now I said from the beginning that fire is the first operator of the world, which throws a spirituous vapor, which it cooks and dries to corporify it; because corporification cannot take place without coagulation, necessarily provided by the dryness of the fire.

But where does this cooking, drying or coagulation take place, if not in the body of the earth, from which all other bodies come? It is therefore necessary that the preexisting matter of them be hidden there: for if it were not there, it would follow that they would be made of nothing; which contradicts the ordinance of Nature, which wants that everything has its principle, and that from nothing, nothing proceeds. This matter or principle is therefore attached to the body of the earth, where it nourishes, thickens, & incorporates. For this cause, those who wanted to draw it from perfect metallic bodies, or from imperfect & simple ones, by attraction of quintessence would have done much better (since they were looking for the first sperm) to open the womb of the mother, than to kill & destroy children who have already reached the perfection of their age, to believe they are returning them to the state they were in when they were conceived.

But when they opened this matrix, what would they find there? Because nothing is visible inside, and many admitting that this route was the most favorable, were still disappointed, hoping to find in the belly of the mining companies some appearance of the beginning of goldification, which they did not do.

However, they despaired of their purpose, especially since they saw no middle ground between the softness and hardness of the metal. Since the eye sees nothing there, how is it possible to find and take anything there? This is the work, but this is the labor. Certainly such investigators did not judge that the first matter is nothing other than spirit & vapor so subtle & loose that the only glance of the intellect can see or imagine it. However, especially since she is attached to the body of this mother, and lives there, it is necessary by reason that she has some quasi-corporeal nature, and capable of becoming corporified. Now since I have previously sufficiently openly declared to those who are endowed with subtle judgment what this Nature is, I will add here that the sponginess of the earth is full of this spirituous vapor, which by the virtue of heat innate, acquires a dry quality, accompanied by a secret mood, by which it condenses & coagulates into a specific body. And as this dried up humid nature was firstly water, it must also be reduced to water by water, which is the only means of aquefying dry things, like fire to dry up wet things: Something that Nature observes very precisely in the generation of metals.

For the water flowing through the earth's pores finds a dissoluble substance, with which it unites through their simplest parts, and to this union the duly proportioned elements are suitable. The substance has thus joined by its dissolution, frozen & coagulates of itself by hardening which it naturally has in it because of its innate dryness: then by successive & long; decoction it acquires metallic hardness. But since this substance is dissoluble, what other nature can it be than salt? because nothing dissolves except salts; of which the multitude and variety is great, since there are as many as there are things in the world? So much so that the more it is burned, the more easily it dissolves, provided it has not reached the point of vitrification. This first material is therefore a salt: That is to say that salt is the first body, by which it becomes palpable & visible, of which Raymond Lulle here hears in his will, when he says: We have above declared that at the center of the earth is a Virgin Earth, & a true element & that it is the work of Nature.

Partant Nature is housed at the center of everything. So salt is this Virgin land which has not yet produced anything; into which the spirit of the world is first converted, by vitrification; that is to say by exhaustion of mood. It is he who gives form to all things, and nothing can fall into the sense of sight or touch except through salt: Nothing coagulates but salt: Nothing but salt congeals: It is he who gives hardness to gold, and to all metals: to diamond, and to all stones, both precious and otherwise, by a powerful but very secret vitrifying virtue. What is more, it is seen that all things composed of the four elements return to salt. For if it happens that a body rots, what will remain of it except an ash powder which conceals a precious salt? & if this body is destroyed by burning, calcination, or incineration, what will we ultimately get from it if not salt? The glassmakers will serve us as proof. This is why Arnault de Villeneuve, great Physician & Philosopher, in his new chemical light speaking of the permanent water of the wise, which is dry water, which does not wet the hands any more than common quicksilver, says: Who So who will be able to make this water? certainly I say that it will be the one who makes the glass.

The same Author speaking of the excellence of this dry water, gave it enough to know when he says in a chemical treatise to which he gives the name; from Philosophical Breviary: The operator will no longer be without salt, than an archer will shoot without a rope. And the fountain of lovers also says, Without salt cannot put in effect, useful thing for your doing. It is therefore of salt that all bodies were first composed, because as I said in the previous chapter, the principles of composition and resolution are similar. And as all philosophers want and hold as an infallible maxim, the first matter of things is none other than their last, that is to say that into which they are resolved at their end, giving as an example ice and glass. snow which by heat is reduced to water, from which by freezing they were made. And if I wanted to report here all the testimonies of the good Authors, a fair volume would arise. Now to show that this salt is the pure and true earth, not the one on which we walk, which I want to prove to be only the excrement and dregs of the other, I will have recourse to the first creation of things to which I will illustrate by the example of a similar operation which is carried out in imitation of Nature, & by the means & same rule that this great universe was made.

I have previously said that the principle of things was water, or else a humid Nature as Hermes says, on which, according to the text of Moses, the spirit of God was focused. But I may be asked how this great mass and confusion of waters was divided, so that this large and heavy land mass emerged? & by what means so many diverse things are produced from this earth. I will answer such questions what experience alone has shown me, saying that it is naturally probable that some settling is first made in the middle of these waters by means of separation, following Moses' own text. , who says that God separated the waters from the waters, because there are two kinds, namely elevating water and freezing water. The first rising by evaporation therefore left the second fixed at the bottom: as seen daily by those who make both sea and fountain salt. It is true that one is made by the attractive force of the Sun's rays: and the other by the expulsive violence of fire. But fire alone, or the only heat among all things in the world, has this separating virtue, by one or the other of these two ways, either natural or violent. It is therefore by one or the other that this separation was provided.

But to whom would Moses have known how to compare this fire if not to the divine spirit, which cannot be defined otherwise than the universal source of light, animating heat & vital movement: by which all things are, & persist in their being? Let us consider the salt of Nature still in its limbo or chaos, that is to say diffuse, dissolved, or drowned in its water, in what form will it appear to our sight, & what quality will our taste & touch attribute to it if not bitter water? Which form & quality it would retain forever if the separator did not intervene. But as soon as this elevating water feels the action of the fire which is its enemy; the separation begins to take place by evaporation, and little by little, diminishing, a small plate of salt appears in the center of its globe which assembles just as the body did of the earth in the first limb of universal waters.

This then is the first operation that the fire carried out, namely to make the arid appear, that is to say, the earth. But just as this first earth remained coagulated by the fire with its excrement & faeces; this salt which is truly earth also retains its own, even though it seems pure & clean, full of whiteness & lucidity: For nothing can be generated, nourished, & grow, without also generating excrement, from the formation & separation of which I reserve the right to speak in their place. Now this salt or this dry earth which coagulates and settles in the water, drinks back all its moisture, and dries up by the continuation of the fire: nevertheless keeping in it an internal humor which does not abandon it; & from which this dissolving virtue comes: then arriving at temperature, between the dry and the humid, it remains suitable for the productions of things, drawn from power to effect by the action of heat. And indeed everything as well as the body of the great earth has this productive and specific virtue of individuals; also to this which we call salt; Not that it produces herbs, metals, or animals, as the other does, but it has in its womb the original seed of all things; so that experience shows us, through the operations of fire, the colors, flavors, growths, vegetations, and hardenings, which we see in each of these three kinds.

And not only that, but also the own fire that the Sun put into it; by which he vivifies & nourishes all things. As it appeared to me during the progress of a certain philosophical work: Having seen in this matter alone, distinctly & one after the other: according to the order & intervals determined by the masters, all the colors & appearances that they say they must arrive at the making of their stone in their material; with this sudden fusion after having reached the high redness of the field poppy: And yet without having produced the miracle so desired & awaited, as for the Metamorphosis of metals: but having produced on human bodies through universal & natural sweats, effects so miraculous that I would not dare to publish without fearing the title of charlatan: however, Monsignor, your Highness can guarantee me from this insult, as an irreproachable witness; since the rumor of these wonders having reached her, you and Jupiter deigned to visit the abode of your poor Philemon; scope of the generous design to be assured by the mouth of a good man, who cruelly afflicted with various pains, and too exhausted from the languid length of his ailments, had no recourse except to heavenly goodness, nor hope only in death, demanded at each moment.

The true statement of which further obliged your highness to make known by solemn information a multitude of others whom I had relieved by this same remedy. And if the greed or envy of the one to whom was committed and entrusted the care of the health of the late (of very illustrious & glorious memory) Monseigneur the Most Reverend Cardinal your very dear brother, had not prevented him from taking it, I believe that God would not have denied his excellence the same grace and blessing that he had extended to so many poor people. If then this Salt has all the qualities of earth, who would want to maintain that it itself is not earth: and consequently that it should not be called Universal Spirit terrifies, as Hermes portrayed it? But I will say that this conversion cannot be done except by an artifice of very easy practice, and very difficult to search. Because without lying it is an act which passes the human to make see with the eye and touch with the finger this first material which a world of men admired for their great doctrine in all the centuries, have estimated or even affirmed to be invisible , & incomprehensible.

Amusing himself only by a profound theory in discussing the excellence of the thing; & not to research it & know by its effects. So that among all the curious people I have practiced in the forty years since I first smelled it, I have not found six who knew it. Now having sufficiently clarified how this salt is converted into earth; & gained this point too, which is the true operation of operations: it now remains to show how after this conversion his virtue remains intact. However, before moving on, it is very reasonable to say what virtue and strength this Spirit or Salt was endowed with, in order to know how to search for it and find it in him when he is terrified. I will therefore say to this effect that it is an indubitable thing and which does not need proof, that the Heavens are in continual movement which necessarily tends towards some end. For, although naturally we can say the end of what moves is to go from one place to another, if the movement is made for some other cause: & the intention of the motion is not is not only to move from place to place: but rather to make this movement to achieve the effect of some other end. Because there are two endings: One that Philosophers call the end for which the thing is done, like the end of Plato's generation, is Plato's soul.

And the end for which Plato took the virtues is beatitude. The other end is that to which things go because of the previous one; like the end of the assembly of male and female, it is generation, but the end for which generation takes place is man, or animal. Also the purpose for which Plato went from Greece to Egypt was to learn wisdom. But the end of his journey was Egypt where he claimed to go. The end therefore of the movement of the Heavens is not only to move from place to place: But in order to influence their virtues on the lower bodies. Because to imagine that the influence is made and spreads uselessly in places where there is nothing to receive it, it is too gross an error. Now this influence of virtues is indeficient and continuous because the movement by which it is made is orbicular, always starting anew and returning to itself. Who is the reason why the things on which it is done, & what proceeds from it are of the same nature & quality; constantly receiving a force and multiplication of these virtues which never fails: and since this influence does not extend to the Heavens, where as I said, it has nothing; it follows from necessity that it must do so on something inferior and corporeal, on which it can act.

For nothing suffers except what has a body: But what natural body is there in the world other than that of the earth? is it not the body of bodies; And the only one who can subsist by himself, having all the qualities required of bodies, namely length, width, depth, surface area? Is this not the subject or prefix goal of Nature, to which she constantly strives to corporify & animate? Or could she accomplish these works if not in the body of the earth? thus the earth is the only lower body which receives celestial influences, the virtues & powers of which are to penetrate, heat, purge, separate, vivify, increase, preserve, & restore. There is no need to dispute here now whether the Stars and the Heavens influence their bodies on the body of the earth, because experience reveals this to us through the testimony of the senses. Whereby, leaving this for known, I will only endeavor to deduce how they make their virtuous influences.

I previously said that they tend directly downwards and not upwards. And especially since the bottom of a spherical body is its center, it is therefore necessarily on the earth that they flow, and in it alone that they end and set their points. Because the earth is the true center of the universe, & the point of this great circle where all the lines of these instructions end. And because this earth is a solid body, and the solidity of all other bodies comes from it, it takes a very subtle virtue to penetrate it through its smallest parts.

The Heavens therefore which are very subtle matter produce similar virtues, because the operations ordinarily follow the qualities of the body which produces them. Now this penetration would be of no use, and would be like running water on a field of which it only waters the surface because of the speed of its course, if it did not make some presence there. But since it infallibly falls to the center, and cannot go beyond, finding nothing lower to descend, it is forced to stop there and accumulate. This is why some have said that the depths of the earth are very precious, because all the celestial virtues assemble and unite there. Which thus united & assembled have an infinite power, as much because they continually flow into it, as because they proceed from bodies infinite in virtues, immortal, incorruptible, & indeficient.

The ancient Poets who fabulously left us what they had imagined of these occult things, dividing the world into three, assigned to Jupiter as the first son of Saturn, the Sky: although some wanted to attribute the birthright to Neptune , & the election of this superior reign to Jupiter, for certain sophistic reasons not at all necessary for my purpose: to which Neptune was given the Sea for its lot. Pluto was appanaged from the Earth, as younger: And however he is esteemed the richest of the three brothers, because in his inheritance all the treasures of the world are continually born and reborn: and it seems that he made his two brothers tributary towards him of what is most exquisite in them. They call him King of Hell, and for his place of pleasure give him the Elysian Fields, where the elect and blessed go courting him. Our Theologians also want that in this same place are the hells, and the torments of souls: persuading themselves that being very true that the influences of all the stars which are of an igneous nature fall there, there must be an incredible ardor. We can undoubtedly call this place infernal, since there is nothing lower: But let the souls be tormented there by this fire, and let the ardor of it be or can be such as they say , this seems far from reason, & from the true axioms of Philosophy.

For, apart from the fact that souls do not occupy any place, by their very confession, and that their nature after they have left the burden of their bodies is to tend and move upwards, because of their spiritual lightness, which has more of the igneous quality than any other; they can only with violence, neither as light being emerged in this underground place, nor as simple suffer the action of the fire which has no influence over its fellow. Why then do they want them to come down to this place to be tormented? if it is not that the heavy burden of sin with which they are enveloped, depressing their nature, carries them downward and brings them down to the center of the earth: and that the same sin once again having seized itself and as if incorporated with them, faces itself I do not know what composition makes them susceptible and subject, not to the simple and natural action of this fire, but perhaps to the violence of another fire created by God for this purpose: and perhaps to this very fire of which we are speaking, his action being redoubled by a secret and divine virtue: which is very probable, and seems to be authorized by holy writing: However, I do not want to rashly give a separate opinion; nor do I deviate from the Orthodox faith, to the support of which I have long devoted my life, and the little industry that I receive from Heaven.

I will nevertheless say in passing (not to deviate from my first speech) that it is incorrect to say that since in this place all the influences of the Stars are assembled, it follows that there must be an extreme ardor, which in truth I would confess if the fire of the Stars were like the vulgar, destroying & consuming, not invigorating, preserving, & nourishing: because if it were such as we believe, there It’s been a long time since not only the earth, but the universe was consumed. These influences truly heat up in the bosom of the old Demogorgon, But it is with a vital ardor, and not mortal, or destructive. Which plants there an omniform virtue, which through this heating expands throughout the entire earthly body, being the first driving cause of generations. And we must not think that the external heat which comes from the Sun alone heats the earth, and causes it to generate: because we see that in winter, while the Sun is furthest from us, the interior of it is warmer than At the height of summer, how deep wells, fountains and water are experienced.

So that during the severest frosts of winter, the metals are not allowed to cook and harden; And we can assure that this is when their greatest cooking takes place, because the central heat is repressed & retained in the earth by the coldness of the air & water which surround it. The Sun returning in spring, and approaching its perpendicular on us, is not the main cause of the vegetation of things: For if it depended on him alone, no one will doubt that the higher and exalted he would be, the vegetation would increase in proportion to the increasing heat: which is seen on the contrary. But because one like man willingly attracts another, and one moving away the other also draws back and leaves, the Sun by the magnetine force of its rays attracts and recalls the heat of the centric Sun, withdrawn and compressed in the interior of the earth by the harsh rigor of the cold, which rising to the surface restores the vegetative virtue to all things.

It is therefore not the external heat of the celestial Sun which heats the depths of the earth, but rather that of the terrestrial Sun innate within it: because there are two kinds of heat: one of reverberation, which is the external ; the other of influence & penetration, which is the internal, of which I hear speak: The natural of which is to vivify, increase, & preserve, by the maintenance of the radical humor contained in this fire from which I mentioned in the previous chapter. What is more, to verify that this central fire is not extreme, nor capable of tormenting and burning, we see that all the stars by their influences do not tend towards heat, and that it is not their only nature to heat up, because Saturn is cold & dry: Jupiter hot & humid: But, hot & dry: the Sun hot & dry: Venus cold & humid, the Moon humid & cold: & Mercury, taking into account the naturalness of all, adapts variably to all. It is therefore an easy thing to judge that all these influences generate a temperate heat of the four qualities, which are hot, dry, cold, & humid. Which agree together, it is necessary that the place where they agree has them in itself with this temperature.

This is why this vapor or spirit which comes from this center participates in these four. From which take their origin all the qualities of the simple; some of which heat up because the heat dominates there: the others dry out because of the dryness which controls; the others moisten & cool according to the more or less coldness & humidity that abounds in them. On the other hand, the Stars pour into the center several other natures or qualities than these, because they sow there the germs of flavors, colors, & odors that we taste, see, & smell in all things. I therefore say that the Stars heat the earth in its center; & consequently this original Spirit which dwells there participates in this heating. And because the natural virtue of heat is to separate; by the same influence also descends this separative virtue, which divides the pure from the impure, the subtle from the gross, the light from the heavy, and the sweet from the bitter.

Which separation, which we can call purgative, is the cause that naturally everything rejects of itself the excrements which are not of its specific substance: which has the truth is very necessary: for there is nothing in the world in which the excrement does not exceed the natural substance. And everything we see & touch is nothing other than the excrement which envelops this hidden substance. Do we see it clearly in the meats we eat? the mass of which is not converted or trans-substantiated into our flesh, but is evacuated through the places intended for this purpose. Nature only attracts from them the invisible and spiritual juice, capable of fleshing out and substantiating itself in us. Likewise we can say that this terrestrial mass that we trample on is only an excrement of the first substance, which gathered in the limb of chaos, sagging & sinking around the center in equal proportion : who caused this spherical roundness, with the balanced substance, which means that it cannot move or fall, because having already descended to the lowest place, it cannot go beyond that by going back up, on whatever side it may be: & that would be totally repugnant to his nature.

We see that the lines which from each part of the surface of a circle fall at its center which is their point, cannot be drawn from it without going back from where they started. I am not saying that in the body of the earth there is nothing but excrement; for although it appears entirely excremental, if in its excrements a pure substance is enveloped; which all spirituality cannot subsist without the administration of a body: as we see in all things which come from it, whose seed & first matter is invisible; but is carried & driven by the bodily mass which is even generated with it, because nothing is corporified without excrement. By which in the generations of things this substance is separated from the body of the earth by the operation of the induced heat; neither taking nor retaining anything from this earth: but only using it as its support.

Which from the beginning served only as a receptacle and storehouse of celestial influences; or to better say that a vessel or this spiritual matter carries out the operations: as it will be more clearly treated with obvious demonstration in the following chapter, where I will speak of separations. Now would it be a waste to separate things if after the separation they remained useless and without action? The goal to which Nature aims is to vivify by separating, in order to avoid death which only comes from the abundance of excrement which suffocates the pure and natural substance: I mean natural death, and not violent and forced. That if the seeds of things always remained buried in this excrementous earth, nothing would come to light, nor would it receive the benefit of life. But the virtue of Heaven by its vital influence pulls them out into the primitive mind, which fills the source with it & dilates in all species & each of them, according to their nature & composition requires it.

The vivification therefore comes from the purification that the Stars make by influencing: with which also arises a virtue of increase & restoration. Because being in continual movement they are also in continual action of influencing, and consequently in perpetual vivification: incessantly adding life to life. Which cannot be done unless the increase follows, with conservation & restoration: One by the indeficient maintenance of life, the other by the infinite refilling of that which employs it & departure to the generations of species: as is clearly seen in this first corporified matter; which, impregnated by celestial impregnation, nourishes itself, multiplies and increases by itself, with a living source of nourishment and growth which flows inexhaustibly. Which is the cause that it is called a dragon or serpent luxuriant in itself: Always reborn & germinating like vegetables, wherever it is. Therefore, any place that has once been populated with it will never be devoid of it, whatever washing or burning one may do with it. And this is certainly one of the most notable marks with which we can discern this raw material.

These are therefore the principal virtues that this universal spirit received from celestial influences from the beginning of the world, and will receive until the end: always producing marvelous effects in all the members of this great universal body. But one might ask me why this first material which I said to have received from Heaven so many pure and virtuous influences, is ordinarily found stuffed with so many vicious qualities? & how does it retain them after having received them, seeing that it is constantly engaged in the actions of separation, vivification, increase, conservation, & restoration? for if it does not separate, it is necessary that it mortifies. And if it does not increase, preserve & restore, it must certainly diminish, destroy, & weaken: which, in truth, it never does. I will answer that the Stars have a double influence; One natural, the other accidental. The natural is that which is innate in them, and was given to them from creation, which is this government of the universe of which Hermes speaks to Pimander, by which they maintain it in its being, guarding it and conserving it by their virtues of destruction, decadence, & annihilation of the virtues of this influence, with which the Spirit of the universe is incessantly supplied & gifted, as we see; which applies them and shows them in all things to which he gives growth and sustenance.

But the accidental is that which occurs to them beyond their nature by the occurrences of their situations & looks: And this changes at all times, so that it is never similar: & only has power over the effects of matter, & not on matter itself. Because whatever malign influence happens, we see that the earth at its center does not allow operations to be duly carried out, and to constantly produce animals, plants, and minerals. That if mortifications sometimes occur, this only comes from the malice of the aspect which only affects the surface of the body, that is to say the excrementous mass, and not the interior substance, which is the same thing. And in truth this accident changes: so much so that this influence sometimes operates one thing, and sometimes another completely contrary thing; What the natural & principal never does, which remains fixed & permanent at its point. From this a conclusion must be drawn that the first matter as simple in itself only receives the celestial virtues, which it still receives and retains in its terrific action.

Now it is necessary to declare how it retains them; in order to prove what Hermes says, that his force remains entire being converted or transformed into earth, especially since all the celestial virtues descend and are appropriate to the center of the earth: and that their courses do not tend otherwise to the information of the matter which is like a receptacle of supreme Ideas. This very matter being full of forms, not actually, but by possibility, diversifies itself by innumerable specifications. Thus it is not properly body, but quasi-body, & continual companion of bodies, which it always attracts by a desire for information towards which it restlessly moves & routes. Which motion & routing happens to it by the action of the celestial fire which I have previously said is the first engine in Chaos. What ancient poets like Orpheus and Hesiod described under the name of love, and which Homer and Pindar François, Ronsard, divinely sang in this inimitable stanza. & sometimes another quite contrary; What the natural & principal never does, which remains fixed & permanent at its point. From this a conclusion must be drawn that the first matter as simple in itself only receives the celestial virtues, which it still receives and retains in its terrific action.

Now it is necessary to declare how it retains them; in order to prove what Hermes says, that his force remains entire being converted or transformed into earth, especially since all the celestial virtues descend and are appropriate to the center of the earth: and that their courses do not tend otherwise to the information of the matter which is like a receptacle of supreme Ideas. This very matter being full of forms, not actually, but by possibility, diversifies itself by innumerable specifications. Thus it is not properly body, but quasi-body, & continual companion of bodies, which it always attracts by a desire for information towards which it restlessly moves & routes. Which motion & routing happens to it by the action of the celestial fire which I have previously said is the first engine in Chaos. What ancient poets like Orpheus and Hesiod described under the name of love, and which Homer and Pindar François, Ronsard, divinely sang in this inimitable stanza. & sometimes another quite contrary; What the natural & principal never does, which remains fixed & permanent at its point. From this a conclusion must be drawn that the first matter as simple in itself only receives the celestial virtues, which it still receives and retains in its terrific action.

Now it is necessary to declare how it retains them; in order to prove what Hermes says, that his force remains entire being converted or transformed into earth, especially since all the celestial virtues descend and are appropriate to the center of the earth: and that their courses do not tend otherwise to the information of the matter which is like a receptacle of supreme Ideas. This very matter being full of forms, not actually, but by possibility, diversifies itself by innumerable specifications. Thus it is not properly body, but quasi-body, & continual companion of bodies, which it always attracts by a desire for information towards which it restlessly moves & routes. Which motion & routing happens to it by the action of the celestial fire which I have previously said is the first engine in Chaos. What ancient poets like Orpheus and Hesiod described under the name of love, and which Homer and Pindar François, Ronsard, divinely sang in this inimitable stanza.

I am Love, the great master of the Gods,
I am the one who moves the Heavens,
I am the one who governs the world:
Who first hatched out of the mass,
Gave light, and split the chaos,
From which this round machine was built.

Since this matter of its own nature and desire tends to corporify itself, who can say with valid reason that by corporifying nature strips it and deprives it of the very virtues which cause corporification? And since it comes to take shape it is firstly and soon converted into earth; Who would want to deny that this land is endowed with its same virtues? Because although because of the commixtion & competition of the elements it has some impurities, if in its depth it is always very pure, so that after its purification the most powerful & active of all the elements, which is fire no longer has destructive power, because it surpasses it in perfection and subtlety. This is why it penetrates all bodies so quickly; invigorating them & increasing in strength; restoring & preserving in them what it finds to be of its nature, namely the radical humidity; that by its igneous fusibility it purges and separates excrement which envelops it and tries to suffocate it.

In a word, it is this excellent medicine which Solomon says is drawn from the earth, and which the prudent man will not disdain. It is also the precious salt to which this great Doctor of Doctors compared his Apostles, as to the most exquisite treasure that the Heavens have produced. For he would have immediately said you are the diamonds, the rubies, the pearls, the gold or the silver of the earth, if he had not known well that all these things, although admirable, have nothing in common with them. they are comparable to this general salt: to which alone they owe the homage of their glorious perfection. This medicine operates like fire by consuming: the impure it separates from the pure, by a perpetual banishment of the Heterogeneous parts; & an adoption of the Homogenes.

Heaven therefore having generated this virgin in the womb of the earth, she rightly retained the virtues of her parents. And as the child who naturally participates in the moods of his father and mother, through the mixture of their seeds, was ancient wise people called by a name properly composed of the names of his two progenitors, namely Androgine; that the poets called Hermaphrodite; because he could not yet be called man nor woman, being incapable of producing the effects of one nor the other: therefore it is appropriate to attribute to this virgin the name of Uranogea, where Terrified Sky, since being earth it nevertheless has in itself, by their virtues, all the Heavens enclosed and joined by an indissoluble bond: whose admirable operations it shows. Of which, however, I have already made here a sufficient opening to those who by the light of their noble intellect will be able to cross the dark depths of the black forest: & as Virgil says, to whom will be given from above to enter the dark dungeons of the earth.

Of the separation of fire from earth; from the subtle to the thick, & by what industry it must be done.

Chapter III.

The very wise working nature teaches us by its own operations that we must in all things consider the end to which we wish to achieve, and with which we must begin our works. For this reason the prudent inquisitor of natural secrets must have true knowledge of the principles, progress, and qualities, both internal and external of matter, so that claiming to accomplish some excellent work he does not confuse the end with the beginning, and by fantastic regimes and unknown paths he never gets lost and strays from the great, plain, and straight path that Nature traced from the first project and foundation of the world. The divine Hermes knew how to follow this path through the perfect knowledge he had of the constitution of the universe: and wanting by Art to follow its vestiges and natural traces, he very prudently imagined that the earth is the principle of all things : & the first that was created by separation within the womb of chaos.

This is why he thus entered directly into the sacred of the natural arcana through the terrifying of this raw material, which I said above was nourished in the matrix of the earth. But as it is not enough for an Architect to have the materials for a building, if he does not have the knowledge to build and implement them: Hermes was not also content to be provided with the material suitable, but he carefully researched and learned the means to implement it, in imitation of the great Physicist in the making of the world: creating from it a small world to which he knew how to enclose all the virtues of the big one, from which, & on the boss from whom he would have taken & shaped it. Considering therefore that what he wanted to do was a very perfect thing, and that to achieve such perfection it was necessary to begin with low and still crude things, that is to say with the separation of what was superfluous and harmful to his work: he first wanted to divide the contrary Natures, to avoid their ruin.

In which we can truly say that he took the bird by the foot, following the adage: & made his entry through the true door & alley which leads straight to the cabinet of the secrets of Nature. For separation is the beginning of all things, and the first operation which distinguished the confused members of the universal body. By the division of the deformed masses of chaos, the order and form of the elements began to be clarified and arranged: for without this separation, day and night, the Sun and the Moon, Winter and Summer, would still be one same thing now: Metals & minerals, so diversified, would only have the same body: And all plants the same seed. It was therefore necessary for Nature to begin this beautiful order & distinction that we see embellishing the universe through the work of separation. But going down to particular things, let us consider that this learned worker begins all her labors there.

Generations neither begin nor end except by separation: and by separation food increases and maintains all bodies. That if I wanted to extend myself to the proof of this truth by each of the species, I would envelop myself in the confusion of the same Chaos from which I would never emerge for the infinity of the examples which would be offered to me. I will therefore lay this first foundation, that nature begins all tasks with separation. But as it is not enough to know this if we do not also know what things it separates, and where this separative virtue comes from: we must examine this matter so that my discourse works in a regular and orderly manner. However, before entering this fray it seems appropriate to define this separation, and declare how many kinds there are.

Now separation in general is nothing other than division & distinction of dissimilar things; as from heaven from earth; of the Sun from the Moon; & other things I've already said. As also the pure with the impure, the hot with the cold, the dry with the wet. And from this definition I will draw two kinds or species of separations. The first will be things that are simply different and not contrary, like parts of the world that were separated from the first chaos. Or to go down to the particularities, like wood with bark, leaves with fruit, root with branches. And this species will simply be called distinction, because in truth these parts are not divided or cut off from each other: whether we consider the principal members of the world, or the particularities, because, although the earth & the Heavens seem separated because of their situation, namely from above & below, if it is not that they are cut off from each other, having a perpetual connection & alliance between them. As well as can be collected from several places in this book.

This is why Homer, no less admirable as a Philosopher than in poetry, said that the earth was attached to Heaven with a golden chain. Moreover, following the example that I recently gave, the leaves & the fruit, the wood & the bark, the branches & the root, are not separated & divided as opposites, but are each distinguished in its own way. ornament & place: nevertheless having a certain kinship & connection, without one occupying the other, but agreeing, helping, & supporting each other. The second type of separation is the disassembly or unbinding of totally strange, contrary & superfluous things: which have no natural connection with the substance of things: as the impure with the pure, the cold with the hot, the gross with the subtle, & similar things. Not that I mean these things cannot be together, but that their assembly & mixture causes by their diversity destruction, or at least prevents the action of the natural virtues innate in pure substance. And this manner of separation must properly be called division or retrenchment, which Nature practices in all its productions, in order to make its own actions and virtues free in each thing.

The first is therefore only like a distinction of parts truly dissimilar in situation & figure, but nevertheless homogeneous in substance & virtue. For it is a certain thing that the wood, the bark and everything that is of the tree, participates in this innate virtue which is properly particular to it, but general to all its parts. As for the other subordinates, there can be dissimilar ones, that is to say, which receive more or less substance, but not opposites: because the same effect does not produce diametrical things in a single matter. ; as from a salutary plant cannot come a poisonous virtue, even if it is salutary to one body and deadly to another; as well as the glass which feeds and breeds the quails, and kills man: not being able, however, to exercise these contrary virtues in the same subject. That is to say that the glass cannot feed & kill the quail, nor poison & feed man at the same time. The virtue specific to the plant is therefore in the whole plant, and each of the parts of the plant is truly dissimilar in situation and figure, but not contrary in virtue or substance, because the leaf and the fruit are of the substance of the plant. , & have more or less the virtues of it. Someone might want to object that cabbages produce two different effects, according to popular opinion, which considers that their juice loosens the stomach, and their grounds tighten it.

To which I will respond that if it is the property of the substance of this plant to release it is impossible for restriction to come from it: because to tell the truth the marc is not substance; as it is quite experienced in the digestion of the stomach which takes the substance of cabbage well as food; but he rejects the mass as excrementous, and which has no nutritive virtue which virtue is all in the substance and in each part of it. For substance has this property that it does not receive in itself any contrariety, but only the more or the less: What I understand of the actions and virtues of it, not of the essence. For example of which we can say that man in each part of man is not more or less man than another; but we see that the virtues & actions, of man are more excellent & powerful in one than in the other; & in this member here than in that one.

The similar is to the simple ones of which we see the parts more or less hot or cold, dry or humid than the other: what their colors and flavors denote, however there is no contrariety in these things; because we do not find that one part of a plant is killed or poisoned by too much cold, and that the other is healed by too much heat: but we do find by experience that the flowers and tops of the branches are more subtle in action & virtue than the trunk or the lower parts: especially since the property of the purest of the substance is to rise to the highest: & the less pure to remain closer to the excrement, in the lower parts. What Nature wanted to practice for two reasons, one to adorn & beautify the plant by the variety of its digestions: the other to give to humans, even to all animals, what they more or less needed for the conservation of their being; showing herself in this to be a very careful mother, who prepares all necessary and proper things, each according to its degree, as much as her industry and power allows her, because she never goes beyond simple perfection: as with herbs, flowers and seeds are the most perfect parts that she knew how to create.

Which subsequently the art beginning or Nature has finished are by him led to a higher degree of perfection, by the same path as Nature: knowledge is by separation: as will be said below. Nature therefore by this first sort of separation only distinguishes things for ornament of the subject, & utility of animals, or other parts of the world, between which; she has sown & planted an alliance & reciprocal kinship, so that all serve & help each other according to their nature & sympathy. But the second way of separation is different, because by it Nature, or art in imitation of it, divides or cuts off contrary things; that is to say that it distracts from the substance everything which is not of its essence, but rather is an enemy to it, being nevertheless with it, even though it is not of it: like the pure of with the impure, the subtle with the gross, the substance with excrement. This second kind of separation also occurs for two causes as well as the previous one.

One to preserve the pure substance of corruption & death; the other to make its virtues & actions freer by stripping it of all gross starch. For the impure thing which envelops the pure of the substance and mixes among it, does not cease to quarrel with it and fight it until it has overcome it and suffocated it, giving entry & access to mortal corruption which never attaches to simple & pure things, but only to orders & compounds. All substance therefore is simple and pure in itself, and consequently not subject to corruption or death: as we see in superior things removed from all excrement. But the inferiors are not like this, because they live in the midst of the impure lees of the world whose nature is to destroy & mortify: as that of purity is to vinify & preserve. Corruptions & mortifications come to men through the islands of the world, in which they live a short & painful life full of troubles & languid illnesses, no less than a criminal enclosed within an orderly & obscure charter, where he transits between death & hope, among infection & vermin, satiated with the refuse of spoiled meat & malnettes.

For all foods are impure, and carry with them the executioners of life, namely the hidden venoms from which death finally murders us in treachery by our own hands, and with our consent; having in them only such a small quantity of invigorating and nourishing substance, and still so much encumbered and infected with excrement, that the digestion of the stomach can hardly attract it alone. These venoms therefore entering and penetrating the bodies with the substance, they continue to increase and accumulate there, until they have offended, even extinguished the light of life, and mastered the legitimate action of Nature. , which is vivification, if by medicine & separation they were not prevented & cut off. It is therefore the excrement which causes corruption, which comes to us of two kinds. The first, from the seed of the parents, who are unhealthy and corrupted, produce impure and corrupted seed, which gets worse from race to race. And which, however, is subject to the correction of medications, which stop the course of this active corruption tending to mortification. It is actually this accursed Satan who circles the world, constantly seeking to devour the poor worldlings: And for this cause he prowls around the terrestrial globe, that is to say, around the excrement of the world which has its main seat on the earth ; which even vomits corruption onto the other elements.

Thus the living men of these and in them, are corrupted in them and by them, and therefore can only have a corrupted seed which always with time becomes more and more corrupted. For our age, more vicious and overwhelmed than that of our ancestors, has made us worse than that of our fathers; as a more depraved one will come out of us; who will be some other capable of even surpassing it in excesses. The other source of corruption arises from abundantly excrementous foods, by which the bodies are infected so that this infection passes from father to son, as we see in leprosy, & other hereditary diseases. Now these foods acquire this corruption from the place of their generation. For after the sovereign author of all things had disposed of the confusion which was within the chaos, he caused that the higher things remained pure and subtle, and the lower orders and gross inasmuch as the nature of substances is to rise towards the place of their origin; & that of the excrement to sag & fold towards the center. Hence it is that the pure which is in animals and plants rises and seeks upwards, making them elevate and grow until it is delivered from the excremental masses which bind it and attach it to mortal corruption, and that he can reach the place or he is further away in order to live there without alteration or failure. Hence it is that more spiritual and subtle creatures inhabit haughty places as well as more refined ones, and live on suitable foods similar to their natural substance.

But those which are more corporeal inhabit the lower places, and remain among the feces & filth which have their seat in the lower places: this is why they are injected & spoiled, living on what is muddled & mixed among the lees of the world. For everything that the earth & the other elements (which are the receptacles of these impurities) can produce, is corrupted & defiled, consequently engendering corruption & defilement in all that is nourished by it: by means of which the blood acquires a bad disposition, which causes the malignity of the humors, to some more, to others less, according to the extent of the inquinament of the parents, & the abusive quantity of the use of corruptible things from which the cause of destruction & mortality proceeds. For if the earth and what it generates were as filled with purity as Heaven, all animals would live the same life as the celestial hosts live. But Nature has established this necessary law that what is more bodily inhabits around what is more corporeal: & what is more corruptible & defiled around what resembles it. Now the earth is the lowest of all bodies, and therefore the grossest and corruptible.

Nothing can therefore come out of it that is not similar to it, if the intervening art of separation does not remove this corruption & impurity, drawing out what there is of pure substance in the bodies: what the true Philosopher can do with industry. I have and will never have any intention of offending Doctors, who on the contrary I honor as ordered. But I am surprised, with many learned people, of the little care they take to lead the Apothecaries to a more useful curiosity in the preparation of their medicines, then that they so often find themselves frustrated with the hoped-for success of their vulgar procedure: because they want to heal & restore sick bodies & debilitate, their brewing quality of beverages in which there are so many impure and coarse feces, that the little substance in which the helping virtue lies is submerged in the venom, and has no power to act against evil; nor Nature to help him in this action, because she herself is worked in this conflict, as much or more by the impurity of the remedy than by the disease.

It is therefore wanting to fight corruption with corrupt & corrupting weapons: which I consider to be impossible. For as Petrarch said, rivers have never been dried up by rain, nor fire extinguished by flames. The corruptible added to the corruptible increases corruption. They also try to restore the debilitated patient by feeding him foods that they consider to be easier to digest and less impure or subject to corruption, but they do not consider that they are making very little progress and that the foods, whatever their choice, do cannot benefit, especially since having no action or destructive force capable of examining or lessening the cause of evil, they only serve as a feeble support for the miserable life stumbling with weakness, which therefore does not leave to expire; if Nature does not make some effort of her own, and revolts against her enemies to protect her from their mortal attacks: or if she is guaranteed by exquisite medicines, elaborated by industrious artifice to purity and supernatural perfection: the incorruption & virtue which restores pristine vigor, & by the same means uproots the origin of the disease. Because any real medicine must do these two operations of purging & restoring everything together.

In which lies the whole art of medicine, although today the lesser of these two parts is in use, namely purgation: and the more excellent, which is restoration, is abolished, or neglected through laziness or greed. Let it not be so, we see some of their potions entering the body of man having any effect other than releasing the stomach, and very often purging, not what causes the illness, but only some excrementous materials which do not in any way affect the evil: and sometimes by simple poorly prepared, or dispensed, & improperly adapted, cause superfluous evacuations which perilously offend Nature already offended. Which is irritated, so much empty talk that she especially abhors; than by the violent movement which takes place in such purgations, tending rather to kill than to heal. Which violence of movement she hates less than the void; because she is impatient with the attacks of these two enemies sworn to her destruction. Therefore, common medicine hardly cures stubborn diseases with its common drugs prepared in the ordinary way.

That if one among several is cured it does not happen by pills, boluses, or drinks, but by the virtue of nature which is still sufficient to overcome the impure quantity mixed in such remedies, and to make profit from their little of substance. Or else that the venefic force of these excrementous & corrupting things, pushed & rejected by vigorous Nature, attracts & carries with itself some portion of the peccant humor which resembles it, & this by attraction & sympathy. Thus, such a strange medicine working on the body moves Nature which, similarly disturbed, and wanting to resist this enemy, rejects and violently fights what is harmful and damaging to it. If any medicine must be suitable and not contrary to Nature, it must necessarily be purged of all these venoms, which it only received from the excrementous and corruptible mass. This is why the true doctor must first choose those things which are most suitable and sympathetic to the human body, and purge them of their impurity: or which naturally have in them a general virtue and purification innate and hidden within their interior.

Which purification cannot be done otherwise than by the destruction & separation of the harmful impure, & the restoration of the pure which was suffocated by filth. But because it is not my profession to practice medicine, nor my intention to deal with it further here, having only said this little to free myself from the strait where the wind of opportunity had launched, I will resume my journey and say that since there is nothing in base things that is not infected, enveloped, and as if buried in the corruption of excrement and feces which generate mortification and prevent the freedom of legitimate substance, and of its actions, it was necessary that by necessity nature had practiced the remedy of separations, which are made by division and removal of the pure from the impure, the subtle from the gross, and the salutary from the destructive. But all the more so since this admirable worker carries out such operations in secret, working there only inside the bodies by secret digestion, and without ever going beyond this simple perfection up to which is extended her power which makes the corporeal Elements cannot lead the bodies where they are enclosed to the supreme degree of their property: Philosophers have prudently decided to separate this substance from the corrupting mass at all, and after this separation lead it along the paths of Nature, which are digestions & sublimations, to the highest degree of purity, acquiring them a new form by a second generation, so that they took away from things all their first Nature, quality & property. Having, to put it better, changed what was an impure body, into a spirit full of purity: what was wet & cold, into heat & dryness.

Practicing this not only to the simple species, but also to the great compost of the world, which is our universal spirit. For if the universal Nature of things is not renewed, it is impossible for it to reach the state of incorruption & renovation. Regeneration is therefore the first fruit that separation produces. But as the grain cannot generate anything of itself if it does not die and rot in the earth; also it is only possible for anything to be renewed & regenerated by previous mortification. Mortification is therefore the first step to ascend to separation, and the only path to achieve it.

Because while the bodies remain in their old corruption & birth, separation can never intervene, unless mortification, that is to say putrefaction & dissolution, has passed there. What Jesus Christ himself divinely knew and made known, saying that unless man dies in imitation of the grain of wheat, he cannot acquire incorruptible life. Not that he means that this life must be acquired through bodily death, because if he were thus the wicked, scoundrel, dying would have the same advantage of the righteous virtuous: But he means that the old man must die , that is to say, that man mortifies & separates from himself the old corruption which he had attracted from the seed of our first father. Now this corruption is properly intemperance & excess occurring through the bit of the apple, since which man has continued to die, because from then on the earth & all the animals it produces began to be infected of the venom of this deceptive snake hidden among the fruits, that is to say the foods, by the delicacy of which it tempts the poor humans to get drunk, and swallow the forbidden morsel in which their death was hidden.

And the serpent is the corrupter that I call Satan because he crawls on the earth, and the circuit incessantly mingling and sliding within it, and what it produces of animals, plants, and minerals, in order to poison the world, & introduce into man the tyranny of death. From this intemperance & excess of living came the deprivation of virtue, vice being properly only a banishment of justice, and justice nothing more than a temperate desire & continual progress towards good. This intemperance and excess must therefore die in us, especially since they generate in man all kinds of sins, and spur him to malice and wickedness. This is why we are commanded to be sober, avoiding gluttony & drunkenness, the main progenitors of carnal desires. And that we fast in order to slow down the pernicious force of the internal flames which move our senses and ignite our blood to corruption.

Now is it well recognized by those who have anatomized man, that there are two men in him, one celestial & immortal, the other terrestrial & corruptible: one who is the captive, & the other the prison. But it is a big question to know how it is possible that the celestial buried in this foul and spoiled abyss can preserve its essential purity there? Because we are very certain that the liquor, however excellent it may be, loses its precious taste or smell if it is enclosed for a long time in a bug vessel. And that the healthiest man in the world will run the risk of being infected if he lives in a plague-ridden house. The celestial man is good and sincere in himself. But joined to the earthly, to which impurity and vices are natural, it is very difficult for it not to be tainted by them.

The depravity of this essential purity undoubtedly comes from the bit of this apple, which is, to speak naively, the intemperance of foods preserved in pernicious & contagious corruption. For this reason it is therefore necessary to mortify this intemperance & corruption, to rebuff this old destroyer of both men, & to regenerate with a new life what approaches the incorruption of the heavenly father of the man. Now our restorer Jesus Christ only taught us two means of regeneration, one by the water of baptism, the other by the fire of the Holy Spirit. Water is the one that washes away stains, fire is the one that consumes & separates all impurities from the pure essence. And just as his precious blood (which is the true water) purges the vices & cleanses man from the death that the mortal corruption of the earthly father has procured for him. Water also dissolves & purges the lees & excrementous waste which causes corruption in all substances.

The fire of the Holy Spirit consumes & separates the excrementous impurity of sins, the fire similarly divides that of the substance of things, which on this occasion must be mortified in order to regenerate itself. And this mortification is the putrefaction & digestion which makes it more capable of receiving the benefit of separation. This mortification takes place in us while the Sun of the Holy Spirit darting its divine rays around the interior globe of man, which is the heart, they heat it to the center, and little by little consume the corrupting affections of the old Adam. The chemical fire of the same kind reverberates the points of its flames around the body it wants to purge, has this virtue of burning and annihilating what is impure and strange in nature. Depending on whether this impurity is more or less rebellious and inobedient to dissolution and separation, which then is accomplished by distillation. It is therefore the right path that nature holds for the regenerations of all things, which would have no commendable effect in medicine if they were not reborn by means of fire and water.

This is why after their second nativity they remain free in their forces & actions, which before were buried in the excremental mass, & could not exercise the vital functions with which Heaven by its benign influence had enriched them, no longer less than Man being still imprisoned in the charter of old Adam cannot produce any praiseworthy and virtuous act. But before embarking further on deducing the practice of these things, I will resume the order I began: namely that having defined the separation and how many species there are, I will now declare that they are, & from which the things which must be separated proceed: & from whom the separating virtue comes. I have sufficiently warned the curious that in every body there are two parts, one is the excrement, and the other is the substance. One which is essential, the other which is accidental. Now the substance simply considered as I said, is completely pure and without any corruption: the excrement, on the contrary, totally impure mixing with the substance is what spoils it and perverts its purity. The generation & formation of substance has been sufficiently clarified in the first two chapters of this second book.

It now remains to decipher the nature and qualities of excrement. Whereupon I infer from what has already been said, that nothing should be separated except excrement, laying this foundation that there is nothing in the sublunary world between passible things that is empty of excrement. For when God separated the parts of the world, there was a reduction and collapse of what was grosser in the first matter, as heavier and less subtle. And from the heap of faeces which gathered below around the center, the earth was formed provided with the true substance: but confused in the coarse thickness of it, after Phoebus had killed the monstrous Python, swollen with the the poisonous humor which had been generated among the earth's silt. That is to say, after the innate dryness had drunk the superfluous humidity through the operation of natural heat, the earth began to feel the actions of this substance hidden in its bosom. Which substance is this spirituous matter, never idle, but constantly prevented from generating & vivifying. Which properly must be in this place called earth, because it is truly the proper and virtuous substance of the earth, and the only one which generates all bodies by its own corporification, according to the ideas of individuals. What I once depicted in the Pindaric Ode dedicated to the great Duke of Alençon, my most honored Lord & master; from which I will relate here some verses on this subject.

The spirit carried on the face
of this indigestible mass,
surrounding it all around,
separates the
heavy matter from the light one,
and the black night from the day.
Then from the accumulated humor
The body heavier and cold
Makes the compact roundness
That with a tight squeeze
Water or air counterbalances
With a weight so firm and equal
That without suffering even badly
Cannot fall into decadence.
Then pouring the soul within
And the seeds of the world,
Makes it second nurse
Of Heaven and burning fires.

Now, especially since from this universal separation, what was more innate and subtle chose the height for its seat, and what was gross and massive descended low to rest there, it happened that the celestial bodies distant and separated from all unclean faeces remained immortal, extending in roundness, both because they rose in the same flight from the beginning, and because the naturalness of eternal things desires the round form, which is the only indeficient form & accomplished. It also happened that the gross and earthly remained subject to corruption and death, because in corruption was joined an assembly of contrary things, namely elements different in qualities, such as heat with coldness and dampness with dryness.

What was also mixed was the commixture of these impure feces which were properly the dregs of the first universal matter, which of itself was not created pure as some imagine, because everything that would have come out of it and would still come out would not he would then have been enslaved to death. And what is more, no generation could be made to the lower world, neither having any alteration nor mutation of the forms, which would all have only the same face: without distinction of top or bottom.

Things would also remain pure & subtle, & consequently deprived of ornament: Even speaking in terms of connection, no creation of matter or the world would have been made. It was therefore necessary to mix these gross faeces with the subtle substance: For where there is only purity there can be no action, because nothing can act without patient; the pure having no dominion over his equal, nor the impure over his equal. Now Nature which is in continual action to separate the pure from the impure, to the conservation of the essence & increase of life, has for its sole subject this substance mixed with impurities, which always retains the state & the naturalness of its first creation, only nourishes it, multiplies, & increases with food, multiplication, & increase of feces, which are not consubstantial to it, but birth companions, or uterine sisters.

Let it not be so, those who have by divine inspiration found the means of extracting this first matter, and of corporifying it to a limitation of nature, know by experience what purity, sharpness, and clarity it seems to have, if it is accompanied by force of earthly filth, which is carried out with great industry. Furthermore, it seems to me that I have already made it known by fairly valid proofs that every massive body is nourished and maintained, not by this visible excrementous earth, but only by this spirituous matter, and we see, however, that they are all full of excrement: & that their entire mass is nothing other than excrement, in which this spirituous matter capable of becoming corporified is lodged invisibly: because whether we eat or drink everything that enters our stomach comes out through the conduits for this purpose, at the same weight and quantity as we took them. It is therefore not from the mass that we draw the oil of our life, but from this pure essence & substance hidden within it.

In short, excrement is nothing other than the impure home of this nourishing spirit, and like a cart which carries it to the places where it must be distributed to accomplish the required separation and digestion. Have trees and plants not seen an excremental mass incorporated into them, and is this mass not the support and conduct of this invigorating and vegetating spirit which makes them grow? I am not saying that everything that is corporeal in the tree or other individual is totally excrement: for in each one dwells I do not know what part of the substances which I cannot simply call body, but only capable of being corporified in some way this that nature cannot do on its own. For so that what is seen and touched is truly generated by corporifiable matter, if however it is not the substantial body, and we perceive nothing but excrement. So that nature never reveals anything of what is the essence of life, and the substance of the thing; or to say more clearly what is of the first & last matter: But the art whose industry goes beyond the simple power of nature, can do it well.

For the ingenious physicist considers that although in natural creations the spirituous matter & substance of things is never found pure, if being mixed among the feces, it follows that it is heterogeneous & strange, because we see it separable to the digestions of the stomach, which rejects the excrement, and only retains the substance: not that this separation falls in the sense of sight, but of the intellect, by the appearance of the effects , when we see the feces separated & rejected separately as useless for maintaining the essence of the bodies. Then the increase, restoration, & vivification which happens to the bodies by this substance certifies it to us: but nature hides from us the operation which produces these actions. The substance is therefore separable, purity must be innate in it which is homogeneous & similar in all its parts.

Now this purity cannot be discovered or brought to light by nature, which never works except simply to lead things to the perfection of its design. But the artist sees that heat is the only way & the tool that nature uses to achieve this perfection, & that fire is the only purgator & separator which always tends to perfectly purify. Then seeing that in all bodies there is some pure substance at its center, which can be separated by nature, if not at all exactly, at least according to the extent of the forces of this nature; he resolves to take the same path & use the same instrument that nature has taken, to have fire, & to direct it so that in destruction of this substance which is pure at its center, it burns & separates all excrement, until 'that having reached a very great purity, he perceives that this fire no longer has destructive power, but rather an action capable of preserving it, exalting it, and introducing into it a tincture and quality similar to his own; finally converting all this very worldly substance into its own nature.

The minister of art therefore judging that in all things this substance is infused; & that all things can be burned, remaining after their burning an ash that the fire cannot devour; he wisely concluded that in this remaining ash there was some hidden treasure, not subject to the rigor of the flames. So much so that continuing his operation he finds salt there, which is not generated by fire, but which remains victorious over the fire, like pure Gold from each burnt body. This salt is therefore the last material that remains in bodies, and not the ash from which it is extracted in the last resort, and from which nothing can subsequently be extracted. Because if it is converted into water by humidity, this water refreezes into salt by heat. From which we draw the conclusion that such water was the true Mercury from which the bodies had first been created: & that this water being hidden in this ash prevents it from being consumed in the fire by burning: Just like the universal Mercury hidden in the bosom of the earth before the production of bodies.

This is why the learned Rouillasque, in his writings, calls this humidity mercurial water of fire, because the fire generates and nourishes it, even increases its goodness all the more the longer it remains in him. For it is the last operation of fire to make salt and salt is nothing other than dry water, which acquires and preserves its humor and its dryness by fire, which necessarily is of a similar nature. What I say here so that people do not find it strange that I maintained from the beginning of this book that fire is not without humor, of which, being nourished, it necessarily participates in it, since all Things must be fueled by what they are made of. So much so that fire & mood are like two correlatives that cannot even be imagined without the other.

And undoubtedly the elements have such a connection & affinity between them that one participates in the other: & each of them is found in its companion. For the earth contains its water, its air, & its fire: Water has its fire, its air, & its earth: Air has its earth, its water, & its fire: And fire has its water, its air, & its earth. Without which participations no conversion could take place between them: & neither would there be any sympathy nor convenience. We can therefore gather from what has already been said that there is nothing empty of excrement: & that excrement & substance are the two parts of which all bodies are composed, & that nothing except excrement alone must also be separated of the subject as accidental, and which has no affinity with the essence of the substance. We can similarly gather that fire is the one that alone provides and facilitates this separation.

But it is time to say how this is done, for it is not enough to propose that separation is the beginning of the works both of Nature and of art, nor to know that these things are separable, if the 'we don't know how this should be practiced. I have previously said that there are two kinds of separation. One which is made by distinction & ornament, of which I will now remain silent especially as it belongs to nature alone, and not to art. The other which is done by division or removal of the parts: which is the one whose practice I wish to clarify. I previously said that all visible and palpable things are composed of these two contrary parts, excrement and substance. As for substance, it is in itself simple and indivisible, whether we generally take it for the first matter of all, or for particular species, according to the impression of the idea or celestial form which is infinite. That is to say that at the limb of the universe, or in each species of compound bodies, this substance is one in essence, virtue, & quality. And we cannot say that in the same subject there is a part of it of one kind, and the other of another: but it is not like this with excrement.

On which I will lay this foundation, namely that there are only two things by which all separations are accomplished, which are fire and water. And that there are only two separable things in all bodies, one of which is divided by fire, and the other by water. We must first of all take for granted that the nature of fire is to consume & destroy everything that is burnable: And that of water to wash & cleanse the substance of the rubbish that contaminates it. Fire devours everything that is volatile & of airy quality, because it is its own pasture. Water divides everything earthly & gross. It is therefore necessary that between its two extremes there is some middle provision which must be saved & guaranteed, having in itself neither feces nor adustion which subjects it to the power of these two expugnators.

By which it is very clear that adustion and feces are the two corruptors and destroyers of all things. What the divine Hippocrates recognized when he said that all diseases come from the air or from food.

Meaning that the excess of meats full of excrement, and the air easy to receive corruption, and which easily corrupts and taints the excrement by a fire exceeding that of Nature; are the causes of all diseases. For the excrement of meat fills the bodies with earthly impurities; And the inflammable air is what is meant by the sulfurous & adustible matter: which easily conceiving the ardor, also consumes with it what is vital & radical, carried away by the greatest quantity of what is volatile & burnable. Earthly faeces and abuse are therefore the two authors of corruption, and what prevents in all things the vigor of substantial actions.

That if we desire the familiar proofs, the stenches that digestion and excrement produce, we will indulge in too much. For what smells bad of the things that we burn, shows clearly that it is nothing good. Likewise are the stinking fumes of excrement coming out of bodies, which come from corruption. But in addition to this corruption that they generate, there are still two disadvantages: one is the prevention of penetration, the other that of fixation: Which are the two actions most necessary for the preservation of life. For what nourishes & maintains life must necessarily be a subtle thing to penetrate bodies through their simplest parts, in order to strengthen & substantiate, like a secret oil, the light of life hidden in the center of bodies.

That if it were crude it would oppress, suffocate, even suffocate rather than enter through such delicate and delicate channels. On the other hand, what holds and maintains life must also by reason be something stable and non-fugitive. That if it were volatile, death would enter us at every moment, introduced by the corruption generated by the starchy adustion which continually besieges our life. Terrestriality therefore prevents intrusion, and adustion prevents fixation and stability. From this can be drawn a salutary advice for Medicine; namely that any true medicine which is taken internally to restore life debilitated by illness, and to remove the cause of imminent death, must have two properties, namely to quickly penetrate to the center of health, and to preserve this center, by dilating it & bringing it back through the whole body. What the ancients once practiced with happy & glorious success. And for some time this Paracelsus has been much barked at and envied; who, following their traces, discovered for his posterity what so many centuries piled up one on top of the other had kept buried. Fasse & says whoever wants the contrary: but I dare to affirm that without the operations of fire nothing can be brought to purity, nor fixation, which are two parts that we must above all seek out & introduce into all medicines.

To which I am inclined & confirmed by a strong reason: which is that no truly medicinal body being in its first nativity, that is to say in the first form, enveloped in the excrementous thickness of its feces full of corruption, can arrive at the headquarters of health, nor counter-guard it having once encountered it; because it does not have this subtle penetration, nor this fixed permanence required for the restoration of what is spoiled and corrupt; & to the conservation of what is restored. For there is no appearance that this can be done by common preparations, either in substance or infusion. As for the substance, the impossibility is found by itself, since it only produces a violent purgation which tends more towards dangerous debilitation, than towards salutary restoration, as I have already shown. And as for the infusion, it is not possible to extract from the simples anything other than a little nitrosity which is in all bodies, with some parts of the excrementous faeces. From which comes the fact that the infusion attracts some external taste of the thing, but not the internal virtue, which at its center has a taste quite different from the superficial matter.

For it is usually seen that common infusions are all full of bitterness, which we try to correct with sugar or honey, since most Apothecaries are unable to extract from things their natural sweetness, in which nature rejoices. For all bitterness that comes from heaven, to which we commonly give the epithet bitter, conceals in its depths a sweetness which cannot be discovered by simple infusions, but by fire, with ingenious artifice. Being undoubtedly this sweetness the perfection of all medicine. This is why Arnauld de Villeneuve says, if you know how to sweeten the bitter, you will have all the magisterium. Which Brachesco knew well, as he testifies in his dialogue entitled Demogorgon. To return to my point, this hidden sweetness cannot manifest itself unless it is entirely developed and devoid of its earthly feces, and of this volatile and airy adustion.

For the earthly generates the strange flavor because of the salt's own excrement; from the diversification of which, depending on the diversity of species, and the places where they are generated, comes such a variety of flavors; For all flavor is caused by salt, and the more salt there is, the more flavor there is. Moreover, what is aerated & volatile generates bad & unnatural odors, which through the adustion & inflammation of the unctuous & burnable sulfur throws out that stench that we smell from what we burn. That this volatile thing is excrement is clearly proven by the stinking fumes from burning bodies from which the soot attached to smoke-filled chimneys and floors is generated. Which retains the smell of burned bodies, & the bitterness of salt excrement.

And this abundance is further verified by the darkness & obscurity that this vapor imprints on everything it touches, preventing the greater part of the light & splendor of Nature, which always desires purity, & sees itself separated from the darkness, as we see in all bodies, of which the most perfect shine with a greater luster, coming from their purity: and the others remain more or less dark according to their more or less confused composition of these impurities: As well as the perfect or imperfect metals. And precious stones give ample knowledge of it. And if we want to leave the distant and strange peregrinations, and by the advice of the oracle finish our curious journey within ourselves, searching carefully for the causes of our indispositions and more annoying diseases, we find that they are born from these foul fumes, which obscure the light of our health: from which follows an apparent indication of what is happening within.

For the healthy man, because of the internal clarity of his natural disposition, wears a clear and brightly colored face: But the sick, barely is he struck by the illness than he shows his attack in a certain dark and leaden pallor, which discolors & tarnishes the naivety of this first complexion. And all this change proceeding only from the fumes of the adustion & inflammation of excremental sulfur, which spread through all the members & infect them with sulfurous soot, right down to their surface, by means of the pores which make the bodies pierceable. We can also say that this pallor & discoloration also comes from the fact that nature, feeling offended & besieged by illness, causes all the clear & clean blood to be removed, from the center of the health of the body, which is the heart, in order to gather there and join all one's forces, to virilely fight and support the attacks of evil, abandoning on this occasion the exterior devoid of this natural clarity.

Which exterior remains as earthly mortified & tending to discoloration & darkness: Because the earth into which it begins by evil to convert & return, is black by its nature, just as fire is clear & candid of the mortal, like two elements of contrary qualities. The earth therefore, for its part, as thick and dark, gives blackness: and the addition of sulfur as sooty and smoky obscures it in the same way. Because of which both are causes of corruption, destruction & spoilage in all things. And it is properly only these two who plot and pursue the ruin of everything, for what they are in everything: and there is nothing here below among the compounds which is exempt from it, except gold, and precious stones, which Nature has crafted to perfection, as much as possible.

So much so that death is a perpetual hostess in all other bodies, which they try to enthrone into things in order to destroy them. But nature, as a pious mother and careful preserver of the work of her hands, has armed in their favor two powerful and subtle champions to suppress the pride of these insolent adversaries, and chase them from their fortress. It is fire for one, exterminator of this sulphurous adusting: and water for the other, which separates and carries away this earthly starch. Now as nature is ingenious & subtle in all its operations, so it has left art endowed with similar subtlety & industry: For there are only these two ways to achieve separations; That nature itself followed from the beginning of the world, from which first formless, empty, and confused seeds were dissolved pell-mell in the waters, from which they were separated by means of fire from the spirit of the Lord extended by above, which was the first agent & motor in the separation of Chaos, from which it followed that immediately light was separated from darkness, distinct forms from confusion, generations from sterility, & death from life. So much so that if things had remained confused in their first disorder & mixture of the impure with the pure, of excrement with the substance of the Earth with Heaven, & of life with death, everything would be deprived of action of power, essence, & life, remaining the whole mass lying uselessly in its confusion.

The artist therefore having entered into the consideration of these things and seeing that nothing can deploy his virtue until the confusion of excrement & impurities is banished, he chose water & fire for his coadjutors, to the example of Nature whose operation he curiously noticed, even in the generation of metals, which are all the more perfect as they have been better mondified & digested in the stomach of the earth. By which it is a point which remained fixed & resolved, that fire & water are the general & principal means of separation. But especially since the composition of things is diverse, and some yield more difficult than others, it was equally necessary to diversify the actions of these two, without however getting lost or deviating from the plain path of the Nature. For some the adustion & unctuous flammable & infective sulfur wanted to be drawn from a kind, & to others the earthly starch of another. Calcination was invented with sublimation, to purge adustion.

And for the terrestrial starch filiation & dissolution were put into use. We still practiced descent to preserve weak and easily inflamed bodies: But all these things are done by fire, like calcination, sublimation, & descent: or by water, like distillation & dissolution. The manners & precepts of which are disseminated in so many good ancient and modern books that I will deviate by discretion from speaking more about them, since all my discourse does not add anything new, nor could bring ornament or ease. It will only be enough for me to say what I know about it in general by way of definition: Namely, that calcination was invented for hard & rebellious materials because of their continuity & strong composition, which prevents them from receiving easily the separation of their excrement without being divided by their smallest parts. And from this come four utilities, which are the burning of impure & fetid sulfur, the easier separation of superfluous & strange earthiness. Fixation of internal sulfur & more rapid dissolution.

For the nature of fire is to consume the adustible parts which are not of the essence of the substance: to facilitate the division & rejection of terrestrial excrement: to fix & strengthen the radical sulfur: & to multiply the salt in the bodies, which only can after receive the dissolution by water. Now I say that calcination only falls on bodies which for their continuity barely yield: Because spirits or things that are volatile & slightly fleeing in the fire cannot be calcined without the addition of things that are fixed & dissimilar to their nature: The intention or goal of calcination being none other than to draw the salts from all things, because in them consists the best part & main secret virtue of bodies or spirits, to which is attached this corrupting adustion which for this subject must be in all sublimation let go & evaporate as useless: in order to better deliver from the earthly faeces this average substance which remains, prepared & sent for purification & fixation by the action of fire. Now this practice of sublimation was found because the calcination which cannot be accomplished without extreme violence of fire would elevate the pure with the feces without any advancement of separation or purification.

It is very true that sublimation requires some fiery violence, but it is only then that the sublimable thing is deeply mixed and attached to the feces or lime of some fixed body, to further stop and retain earthly filth. And this way of sublimating is the safest; except for things that have their feces capable of stopping by themselves. The descent is practiced for two purposes, one in order to draw oil from plants, without burning them, the other, to soften the melting bodies before they become leaky. These are the three ways of separation which are done by fire. There remain the other two which are done by water, namely distillation and dissolution. The first is done by the inclination & the filter, in order to obtain the limpidity of the things dissolved in the water, with the water. Because that which is done by the alembic I put in the rank of sublimations, before that it is done by elevation and not by enema. This, which some consider to be indifferent and of little effectiveness, is however not to be rejected, but rather to be valued, as one of the principal operations of nature, which established it as the only means of separating the terrestrial filth opened & loosened by the previous calcination, & prepared for separation: & thus leading & conveying things to the advancement of their perfection, to the purity of which this way of distilling them elevates & sublimates, being for this subject of some wise men called secret sublimation.

The second operation which is carried out by water, namely dissolution, is carried out by humid and moderate heat, like that of horse manure, of the bain-marie of boiling water steam, or by infusion in the water: or by burial in humid places: but all these arrows fly at the same goal, which is to reduce the calcined things to water, so that by this liquefaction the filtering earth remains collapsed at the bottom of the vessel. The reiteration of this practice is very subtle & necessary, almost in all things.

Because if by continuous calcination, we wanted to separate the simplest parts of a compost, and reduce to salt what salty essence it has, this would result in an irreparable inconvenience, because the untempered and assiduous force of the flames would sublimate and would constrain the best and largest part of what we are looking for with so much care, so that there would remain very little of the soluble matter with a large quantity of feces. Besides that if it remains in the fire for too long, this remaining material could become vitrified. It is therefore better not to hinder or violate nature by excessive haste and to patiently recover from reiterations. This inconvenience happened to me once during the calcination of the common Crystal, which wanting to purge its excrements to reduce it to true essence by a long ignition, I found entirely vitrified with its feces & therefore useless for my purpose, & for any other work .

Because although the Crystal appears clear, lucid, & transparent, the first black smoke, then violets which present themselves during its calcination, with a stinking & sulphurous odor, clearly testify to its excrementous earthiness just as the white ones which follow them are true indications of the homogeneity of the substance, which ultimately remains clear & floating in small quantities , as long as it has reached the Nature & consistency of pure crystalline salt: & during these last reiterations the unpleasant odor which is felt at first changes into a very sweet & pleasant one, similar to violet powder. Now from the reiteration of calcinations, in addition to the things predicted, two goods arrive: One, that the calcined thing acquires through the habituation of the fire this subtlety and permanence to the medicines of which I have already spoken: The other, that what is often dissolved acquires penetration, prompt & subtle intrusion, & powerful virtue of transmuting the state of the patient, from illness to health from languor to vigor, from destruction to restoration & perfect amendment.

These are the ordinary ways of all separations which tend to no other aim than to sequester pure substances from their corrupting excrement, & elevate them from the heavy earthly thickness to purity: & in short from imperfections to perfection. What Hermes wanted to teach, when he said that we separate the earth from the fire, and to interpret himself he added these words, and the subtle from the thick. What he wants to be done slowly and with great industry. Because by speaking of the preparation of the general spirit of the world after the terror, and by the same means opening the way to that of all individuals, he wanted to make it understood that in this earth there is something difficult to remember and keep, namely a light & volatile spirit which is preserved by the temperament of fire, & which on the contrary would easily vanish with the separable part which abounds ever more, & overcomes in the most quantity of fixed substance, if we do not governed the operation with patient gentleness and ingenious method. To which the artist must observe an important maxim: it is the distinction of the three sulfurs, the two of which are separable, namely the external which is lost by calcination & dissolution, and the internal which disappears by decoction alone. : But the third is that which we call fixed: which is properly the true sulfur of Nature, & the proper subject of the substance, to which the Philosophers have given the name of agent, or fixed grain, or element of fire, into their physical compost.

As for the external, it is the first volatile and adustible, especially since it is entirely foreign, and the first food of fire. The internal is more united & rooted in substance, & therefore only dislodges with greater violence & continuation of fire: This is why before its departure it takes on all colors, starting with blackness, which is the first mark of earthliness, adustion, & corruption: & the forerunner of putrefaction & mortification. Then crossing through the other means little by little arrives at whiteness, which is the color of the air, from where it rises to the igneous color, which is redness, in which the power of art ends, & the empire of fire: beyond which there is no further progression. Something that poets have fabulously depicted in the character of the fickle Protheus who transformed himself into various monstrous figures to frighten and destroy those who tried to capture him. Now this variety of colors is caused by internal sulfur, the true author & producer of all the dyes & various variegations that we see by nature & by art in all things in the world. And they can be distinctly noticed in the decoction of this first universal subject, as he (as I have already said) produced them for me once. But as soon as whiteness shows itself, immediately the sulfur of Nature appears, which Geber says is white on the outside, and red on the inside: because this whiteness is finally followed by redness, without any other help than fire continued and increased by degrees. , who made one of the wise men say that their white stone was a gold ring covered with silver.

I was kind enough in passing to say these few words about the colors that we find designated in all good authors: not to presume to teach here the preparations & operations that I know well to be necessary for the accomplishment of their great Elixir so exalted and highly praised by them: But only to make the curious disciples of the learned Medea, who by a careful and profound inquisition try to enter into the sacred of mysterious Physics, recognize what are in all things the sulfurs that he must be removed or retained. Believing that I have sufficiently used the time that I steal from the economic dealings to which I am attached, if I can restore some vigor and sparkle of life to this languishing part of natural Philosophy, which the envious of its glory have buried alive in the tomb of the slander, under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for all basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla.

Then crossing through the other means little by little arrives at whiteness, which is the color of the air, from where it rises to the igneous color, which is redness, in which the power of art ends, & the empire of fire: beyond which there is no further progression. Something that poets have fabulously depicted in the character of the fickle Protheus who transformed himself into various monstrous figures to frighten and destroy those who tried to capture him. Now this variety of colors is caused by internal sulfur, the true author & producer of all the dyes & various variegations that we see by nature & by art in all things in the world. And they can be distinctly noticed in the decoction of this first universal subject, as he (as I have already said) produced them for me once. But as soon as whiteness shows itself, immediately the sulfur of Nature appears, which Geber says is white on the outside, and red on the inside: because this whiteness is finally followed by redness, without any other help than fire continued and increased by degrees. , who made one of the wise men say that their white stone was a gold ring covered with silver.

I was kind enough in passing to say these few words about the colors that we find designated in all good authors: not to presume to teach here the preparations & operations that I know well to be necessary for the accomplishment of their great Elixir so exalted and highly praised by them: But only to make the curious disciples of the learned Medea, who by a careful and profound inquisition try to enter into the sacred of mysterious Physics, recognize what are in all things the sulfurs that he must be removed or retained. Believing that I have sufficiently used the time that I steal from the economic dealings to which I am attached, if I can restore some vigor and sparkle of life to this languishing part of natural Philosophy, which the envious of its glory have buried alive in the tomb of the slander, under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for all basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla.

Then crossing through the other means little by little arrives at whiteness, which is the color of the air, from where it rises to the igneous color, which is redness, in which the power of art ends, & the empire of fire: beyond which there is no further progression. Something that poets have fabulously depicted in the character of the fickle Protheus who transformed himself into various monstrous figures to frighten and destroy those who tried to capture him. Now this variety of colors is caused by internal sulfur, the true author & producer of all the dyes & various variegations that we see by nature & by art in all things in the world. And they can be distinctly noticed in the decoction of this first universal subject, as he (as I have already said) produced them for me once. But as soon as whiteness shows itself, immediately the sulfur of Nature appears, which Geber says is white on the outside, and red on the inside: because this whiteness is finally followed by redness, without any other help than fire continued and increased by degrees. , who made one of the wise men say that their white stone was a gold ring covered with silver.

I was kind enough in passing to say these few words about the colors that we find designated in all good authors: not to presume to teach here the preparations & operations that I know well to be necessary for the accomplishment of their great Elixir so exalted and highly praised by them: But only to make the curious disciples of the learned Medea, who by a careful and profound inquisition try to enter into the sacred of mysterious Physics, recognize what are in all things the sulfurs that he must be removed or retained. Believing that I have sufficiently used the time that I steal from the economic dealings to which I am attached, if I can restore some vigor and sparkle of life to this languishing part of natural Philosophy, which the envious of its glory have buried alive in the tomb of the slander, under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for all basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla.

Something that poets have fabulously depicted in the character of the fickle Protheus who transformed himself into various monstrous figures to frighten and destroy those who tried to capture him. Now this variety of colors is caused by internal sulfur, the true author & producer of all the dyes & various variegations that we see by nature & by art in all things in the world. And they can be distinctly noticed in the decoction of this first universal subject, as he (as I have already said) produced them for me once. But as soon as whiteness shows itself, immediately the sulfur of Nature appears, which Geber says is white on the outside, and red on the inside: because this whiteness is finally followed by redness, without any other help than fire continued and increased by degrees. , who made one of the wise men say that their white stone was a gold ring covered with silver.

I was kind enough in passing to say these few words about the colors that we find designated in all good authors: not to presume to teach here the preparations & operations that I know well to be necessary for the accomplishment of their great Elixir so exalted and highly praised by them: But only to make the curious disciples of the learned Medea, who by a careful and profound inquisition try to enter into the sacred of mysterious Physics, recognize what are in all things the sulfurs that he must be removed or retained. Believing that I have sufficiently used the time that I steal from the economic dealings to which I am attached, if I can restore some vigor and sparkle of life to this languishing part of natural Philosophy, which the envious of its glory have buried alive in the tomb of the slander, under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for all basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla.

Something that poets have fabulously depicted in the character of the fickle Protheus who transformed himself into various monstrous figures to frighten and destroy those who tried to capture him. Now this variety of colors is caused by internal sulfur, the true author & producer of all the dyes & various variegations that we see by nature & by art in all things in the world. And they can be distinctly noticed in the decoction of this first universal subject, as he (as I have already said) produced them for me once. But as soon as whiteness shows itself, immediately the sulfur of Nature appears, which Geber says is white on the outside, and red on the inside: because this whiteness is finally followed by redness, without any other help than fire continued and increased by degrees. , who made one of the wise men say that their white stone was a gold ring covered with silver.

I was kind enough in passing to say these few words about the colors that we find designated in all good authors: not to presume to teach here the preparations & operations that I know well to be necessary for the accomplishment of their great Elixir so exalted and highly praised by them: But only to make the curious disciples of the learned Medea, who by a careful and profound inquisition try to enter into the sacred of mysterious Physics, recognize what are in all things the sulfurs that he must be removed or retained. Believing that I have sufficiently used the time that I steal from the economic dealings to which I am attached, if I can restore some vigor and sparkle of life to this languishing part of natural Philosophy, which the envious of its glory have buried alive in the tomb of the slander, under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for all basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla.

immediately appears the sulfur of Nature, which Geber says is white on the outside, and red on the inside: because this whiteness is finally followed by redness, without any other help than the fire continued and increased by degrees, which made someone say one of the wise men that their white stone was a ring of gold covered with silver. I was kind enough in passing to say these few words about the colors that we find designated in all good authors: not to presume to teach here the preparations & operations that I know well to be necessary for the accomplishment of their great Elixir so exalted and highly praised by them: But only to make the curious disciples of the learned Medea, who by a careful and profound inquisition try to enter into the sacred of mysterious Physics, recognize what are in all things the sulfurs that he must be removed or retained. Believing that I have sufficiently used the time that I steal from the economic dealings to which I am attached, if I can restore some vigor and sparkle of life to this languishing part of natural Philosophy, which the envious of its glory have buried alive in the tomb of the slander, under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for all basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla.

immediately appears the sulfur of Nature, which Geber says is white on the outside, and red on the inside: because this whiteness is finally followed by redness, without any other help than the fire continued and increased by degrees, which made someone say one of the wise men that their white stone was a ring of gold covered with silver. I was kind enough in passing to say these few words about the colors that we find designated in all good authors: not to presume to teach here the preparations & operations that I know well to be necessary for the accomplishment of their great Elixir so exalted and highly praised by them: But only to make the curious disciples of the learned Medea, who by a careful and profound inquisition try to enter into the sacred of mysterious Physics, recognize what are in all things the sulfurs that he must be removed or retained. Believing that I have sufficiently used the time that I steal from the economic dealings to which I am attached, if I can restore some vigor and sparkle of life to this languishing part of natural Philosophy, which the envious of its glory have buried alive in the tomb of the slander, under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for all basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla.

under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for any basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla. under the odious title of abusive transmutation & falsification of metals: Although the mere ignorance of the true mystery preventing them from making the distinction, gives way to their slander: which for any basis is maliciously based on the effrontery of certain affrontors, runners, & sellers of smoke, who veil & cover with the sacred mantle of this beautiful virgin, their shameless & immodest sophistications with the makeup of which they charm the eyes of the credulous; & like treacherous Sirens, plunge the curious into Caribde & Scilla.

On the ascent of the spirit to Heaven, & its descent to earth.

Chapter IV.

This great and Sovereign author of all things, foreseeing from the beginning of the world that infection & corruption would be a deadly war in all things composed of body & spirit, wanted to oppose this dissension with a certain remedy, in order to save the one & don't lose the other. For the spirit & the substance being enveloped in the bodies, & the bodies buried in corruption, it was impossible that being the bodies assailed & overcome, by corruption, the spirit lodged in them would not receive loss & damage. and remained with the bodies the slave of death, which is constantly on the lookout to surprise nature, and enter into all kinds and species to exercise its tyranny.

The proof is too sufficient in the natural and sometimes precipitated end of animals, plants, and minerals, which we see arrive by accident of corruption. And who mortifying the bodies it happens that the spirits run the same fortune. That is to say, their life-giving virtues are completely annihilated. But because in all his works this admirable worker wanted to spark the fire of the perfect love which he bears to the man whom he had destined from all eternity for the only instrument of his glory, subjugating to he alone all that would be most marvelous in the creation of the universe: he established in his favor sovereign remedies both to purify & accomplish the things he had created for his use, and to keep & preserve it himself against the assaults of this deadly corruption. Knowing therefore that the two parts of man were created one in the other, namely the spirit to the body, and that the body is continually besieged with corruption by its sensuality which attracts and tempts it to the intemperance, generating infection & damage to all members, he predicts that the spirit which is the host could not remain free from contagious corruption. Also we ordinarily see that the man entirely given over to bodily intemperances & overwhelmed with sensualities, by the same means wicked & licentious denies all excesses of spirit, bankrupting the love & fear of God: honor & glory of the world: to piety towards one's own: & to charity towards one's neighbor. So that, sinisterly wallowing in the quagmire of its crimes, it is impossible for the mind not to participate in the sorrows as it will have participated in the pleasures.

And considering that the entire human generation since the first excess, which occurred through the bite of the forbidden apple, continued to run towards this death, and that by this means the ruin of all man was inevitable, he prevented this misfortune by a wonderful remedy & beyond human understanding. For knowing that through spirit and body man participated in Heaven and earth, he wanted the remedy to have a similar participation. What was found in Jesus Christ our unique savior, restorer, & preserver descended from Heaven to earth, who nevertheless retained his entire deity, miraculously became man with a mystery misunderstood & incomprehensible to common sense, especially that salvation could not come from the earth alone where corruption reigned; so that it was necessary for the water to flow from above where the fountain of purity is. He therefore came to earth to dwell in us & with us, to enclose us within the barriers of justice & temperance, regenerating us to new life, by a change of spirit & body, mortifying those of corruption & sin , to give birth to those of sharpness & virtue.

Which could only happen through him alone because of the extremities of the two natures that he had to take, making himself divine and human, in order to average the alliance of low things with high ones, distant from each other by this incompatible distance of death & life, of corruption & purity. The earth received this inestimable treasure and too much in excess of its merit, by a means it was unable to understand from where, after the regeneration projected by the water of purification, & the fire of the Holy Spirit, it returned to Heaven, entirely stripped of bodily accidents and passions only, and not of the body which he took away incorruptible and glorious, having acquired immortality by his death. And from the right hand of the father he will descend to earth after the universal conflagration to renew the world & separate the good, exalted & destined for life, from the bad, depressed & condemned to death. This is how the sovereign father of mercy has provided for the salvation of man, whose body united with the spirit in the same way as its preserver that Heaven gave birth to the world, and which must be sought and discovered by the light of Nature, being man for this effect endowed with rationalization & judgment, in order to be able to know & understand the gifts presented to him. But this man who in order to carry out such research had been created as celestial, forgot himself, employing instead what he had that was noble and divine in himself to I don't know what frivolous and perishable vanity that he inquisition of useful knowledge and solid truth.

In short, he preferred to follow the inclination of his earthly genus, rather than the divine and celestial intelligence, which he allowed to stagnate within him, as an indifferent thing, and which would occasionally have been transmitted to him from above. Is this why the race of men has always been almost extinct before seeing the light? (except a few that a favorable star looked at with a good eye when they were born, ) has more eagerly pursued the possession of treasures & perishable goods, than she has thought about the acquisition of celestial gifts & precious riches that good mother nature displays to her publicly & in all places, for salvation & maintenance of one's life: damaged rather than helped by the abundance which is commonly shrouded in deadly corruption.

And it is clearly seen that the most spiritual among the vulgar, having in no way glimpsed the brilliant brilliance of these infinite riches, are only amused by their superficiality, cowardly abandoning the divine virtue concealed in their center. Which has caused so many errors, not only in their medicine, but also in their philosophy, that they both go crawling and tottering in the dark caves of uncertainty, not to be guided by any bright light. Recalling therefore the minds of the clarity which must lead them towards the sovereign remedy which God has particularly intended for the preservation of man by filling him with celestial blessings, I will dare with all the humility & sincerity required & decorous within my reach & profession, not as a Theologian, but only as a simple disciple of the Philosophers, sketch here some naive conceptions, which lovers of truth can favor as much as they find them reasonable. I will therefore say that all intelligence that man alone communicates to man is uncertain and confused, because ignorance and irresolution usually reside within it. But that which it receives from the universal light is very clear, and very firmly based on an unshakeable foundation.

Because to know absolutely is to know things by their first causes, and there is never any certainty about the latter until we have reached their source. This is why the Nature of species cannot be known unless the knowledge of their genus has preceded them. Nor the Natures of Microcosms (whose number is infinite) without first having understood that of the great world which gave them being. Man also cannot be well known without prior knowledge of the Macrocosm, of which he is only the effigy, any more than this Macrocosm without having understood what and how it is made. For in what way could we know the man who is at his beginning only a little mucus or formless mucilage, nor how he ascends to perfection, if we have not known those who have generated, not the second parents, who are the father & the mother, but the first, namely Heaven & Earth. And even if we did not have perfect understanding of the first creation of these, how could we know them? Just as the limb of man lies in the womb where it is only a little mire, which is subsequently formed on the example of the parents and by the same progress and ways in which they were perfect. Thus Heaven and Earth, and everything that is in them, that is to say all this great world, is like a limbo and mass in chaos, of which we can have no light if we do not contemplate the projects & projects of his distinction & training.

Let us therefore come to the original in order to know the extracts: & by the pattern let us judge things imitated. I say that the first and sovereign creator (who is like the point from which all things start, & the inexhaustible source from which flow this infinity of streams,) has a nature which is particular to him, namely to produce & preserve everything in the universe. For it is the characteristic of the perfectly good author to produce & procreate things, then maintain & preserve them, when he has created them. The secret of this first effect, which is creation, is hidden from all, and we only have it as an effigy for generations. But the second is open at least to the enlightened, as elect & born of the spirit, not to children of the flesh, so that these precious daisies are not shamefully prostituted to dirty & stupid swine.

Now the first and most excellent degree of this conservation was made & taught by Jesus Christ, in the manner previously declared: who wanted to be imitated in all things, having with inexpressible mystery made himself the patron of all the good works that must be done in the world. Because Nature always walks at the same pace without ever leaving her paths which she follows exactly in all her works. So the father and common preserver provided for the common preservation from the birth of the world. Nature has similarly made its plan from the beginning, and has always employed itself in its productions with continual action. For just as it was necessary for all salvation to come from above for the preservation of the spiritual part of man, it was expedient by the same necessity that that of bodies should spring from the same rock, all the more so. that from base things where is the seat & habitat of mortal corruption cannot bring salvation or life.

This is why Heaven as a perpetual fountain of immortality & perfection will continually influence its virtues on the body of the earth, which the benign Stars favor with their lovingly pitiful aspects in consideration of afflicted mortals: in order to generate in it by these let us influence an immortal and life-giving Spirit, which taking shape in the bosom of this second mother, showed and expanded its virtues throughout all parts of the world, distributing them to each creature according to its scope. And from there proceeded the particular forces recognized by their effects on herbs, beasts, stones, and other things which have drawn from this general Spirit, this infinity of powerful properties, which work almost a miracle in the preservation of our bodies, and of all others. Now as God was good enough to enrich men with the perfections of his son, according to the understanding of their nature: And yet did not want each of them, being soiled with vice, to seek their remedy and perfect salvation in their fellow man, but in the one alone who was the true Ocean from which this perfection flowed to them. Also Nature, who has always made herself an exact observer of the wills of God & imitator of his operations, has not established the perfect virtue of healing & restoration with particular herbs & creatures, but wanted it to be sought precisely at the center of where it is generally communicated to them, namely in the earth, where this vinifying Spirit is generated.

For if the simple are endowed with the virtues of healing, restoring, nourishing, and preserving, how much better must he be endowed with them who gives them them, and from whom all things receive them? Now to prove that the earth is the treasurer & dispenser of these virtues, daily experience alone is sufficient for all reasons. She must have them all, otherwise she could not give them away. It is therefore a thing worthy of admiration & astonishment that so many great people have consumed the time of their studies & practices drawing water from simple streams already far removed from the pure limpidity of their source as having passed through the impure silt of the filthy lands & did not think to run straight to the proper fountain. Not that I want to disdain special medicines, but I would like us to look for the general, without however neglecting the particulars. Because I believe that this one is sufficient for all cures, if these are still laudable to put an end to certain external evils which only attack the surface, and not the center of health, therefore returning to my goal I will say once again that the earth is the matrix in which Heaven has generated this nourishing, restorative, & concruing Spirit of bodies, from which only all solidity & perfection of healing can & must be drawn.

Now how we must find and take this powerfully virtuous Spirit, every prudent man who has a sincere desire to carry out this useful search, must above all be warned to constantly follow the plan traced by the divine hand, on which Nature itself is formed and guided: as much as God, infinitely exceeding Nature, is in any way attached to natural reasons, any more than a sovereign monarch to the laws he would have prescribed, which however his people would observe without asking why he would have established them in this way. But who better followed the traits of this divine model than the old Trismegistus, who first after the flood (according to some) having opened to men the mysteries of the knowledge of God, perfectly touched those of Nature? because besides what he angelically clarified the divinity, through Pimander, where he manifests with an admirable doctrine, the creation of the big and small world; their beginning, progress, & duration, continuing with the same flight this sacred Philosophy in Asclepius, it seems that with a Spirit & prophetic voice he loudly declares the regeneration of man must one day be done through of the son of God, clothed in human robes.

And if again industriously struck the same blank on the emerald table, where he says: that just as all things in the world are created from a single subject, by the meditation of one, who is God, his magisterium (which is this sovereign & general medicine) will be perfect & accomplished from this unique thing by adaptation. Is this adaptation not the mirror in which we see divine meditation enigmatically represented, to show that Nature necessarily follows the steps of its master: just as in other books it has testified that the author of regeneration has salvation had to come from Heaven and become man, living among men for their edification? Also he says at the table (which he left as a testament & last testimony of the excellence of his high conceptions) that this general Spirit preserver of bodies, to whom he attributes the name of father of the perfection of all the world , descended from Those, namely the Sun & the Moon, whom he told Pimander to be the main governors in this worldly Monarchy in order to corporify himself in the earth, which he calls his nurse, by means of the the air that he says he carried in his belly, especially since the celestial influences could not be communicated to the earth, if the air which first received them did not carry them as a mediator and served as their vehicle. And just as the divine restorer & protector of souls left nothing of his divinity when he became man, he also says that this universal Spirit, preserver of bodies, keeps and maintains his entire force being converted into earth; that is to say, by taking an earthly body. God wanted his own Son, our Redeemer, to be regenerated in his humanity by the water of Baptism and the fire of the Holy Spirit.

Not that at the center of his Nature he had any need to be purged, but only because he was among the world and men full of corruption to whom he wanted in everything and everywhere to be true patron of renewal & purification giving them a visible & ample testimony that it was as to the flesh of their nature; not defiled nor corrupted, but liable & mortal as well as they. Similarly, good mother nature wanted her first born son, who at his center is of pure substance, was nevertheless renewed & as if regenerated by water & fire; that is to say by the separation of what is terrestrial from what is igneous; from what is thick to what is subtle; & to say in a word from the impure to the pure. What Hermes means by saying that one separates the earth from the fire, not that one must separate one's own earth from one's own fire. For man will not separate those whom God has joined but only from what is impure & gross, from the pure & subtle of the substance of this earth & this proper fire, which are the parts or Elements of our spirit corporified.

But besides this intelligence which first presents itself to the eyes of the intellect, there is still another more hidden: for having signified by the separation of earth from fire, that of the gross and the subtle, he has also meant that it was necessary to separate the natural qualities of these two elements, by stripping away the humid coldness attached to earthly and serious things, without which it cannot subsist, to put on the warm dryness, which is of the nature of fire, & therefore light & spiritual. This is why he adds that it ascends from earth to heaven, namely from imperfection to perfection: for Paracelsus calls the fire firmament. Now as nothing can reach celestial perfection without first having left the imperfect and peaceful mortal crust, in which properly superabundant this quality of coldness which causes the accident of mortification, as heat generates life: also the very wise Nature has established this rule that its subject must endure & pass through the obscure darkness of death to reach a clear & candid immortality & renewal of life, that is to say an impassive essence on which neither fire , nor corruption no longer have any power.

And in truth this acquisition of life through death is practiced naturally in all vital creatures. For it is necessary that all sperm or seed to animals be mortified in the womb, and to plants in the earth, before any vegetable growth, or specification can be made. If this rule is observed religiously by the members, how much more exactly must it be recommended and followed by the leader? And if through this mortification the life of the accessories acquires some duration, how much closer will that of the principal approach to perpetuity? Jesus Christ himself teaches us these things by the similarity of the grain which he said could not bear fruit unless he died first, signifying the mystery of the resurrection which his death must precede. Because he wanted to die in order to be reborn to a more lasting and glorious life, showing himself in this, not only exemplary of men, but true patron of all Nature. This Saint and learned Roman Hermit reverently and often times alleged by all the natural philosophers who have written for fifteen hundred years, Morien, says the same about the fixed grain to which Nature has given the power to perfect and multiply metals.

Because he says that if it is not rotten and blackened it cannot be accomplished, and will be reduced to nothing. I have licensed myself to say this in order to teach the less educated how one must recognize the creator by simple creatures. And all the more so since vulgar men beg for this knowledge of more distant things, doing like those who demand the perfection of sciences from schoolchildren in the last class instead of consulting the old oracles of the wisest doctors: I was kind enough by these naive conception conjure them to use the excellence of this rational soul which is given to them to inquire what this sovereign principle is, by the most exquisite things which give and preserve life to us, and to all mortal creatures. Mortification therefore necessarily precedes any entry into Life & mainly in this spirit first born of Nature when it has taken body. For we cannot otherwise separate from him what prevents his regeneration for life, and the purification of his essence.

Not that in this death he loses his body by burning and destruction of fire, nor by rotting, but just as in the germination of seeds putrefaction does not annihilate what is corporified in them or just as the precious body of our Redeemer was in no way deteriorated, destroyed, nor corrupted, always having in it this center & germ of life by which he resurrected, to which these two natures were so joined together that they never abandoned each other: for the bodily retained the spiritual here below as much as was necessary for our salvation & the spirit took the body to Heaven for glory, after the mystery was accomplished. This is why in the exaltation of Mercury or universal spirit, after the first degree which takes place in its preparation by separation, everything that remains in it corporeal & spiritual is made volatile, because the elevating virtue still overcomes the virtue fixing. However, in the end the fixed retains with itself the volatile by the action of the helping heat, which increasing the forces of the two noblest elements totally annihilates the power of the two most imbecile.

What Hermes wanted to mean in one of his treatises by the feathery bird which is held by the bird without feathers. And Nicolas Flamel by the two dragons, one with wings, and the other without, which he had represented in one of the arches of the St Innocents cemetery in Paris, and in another stone painting next to it. from the great altar of the church of Saint Geneviève des ardents which he had built. But without getting lost in the twists and turns of these mazes, Do we not see that all vegetables never cease to grow and rise into the air by the force of this volatile spirit, which (as I said in the first book) would elevate them even more for the desire it has to return to the place from where he left, if they were not restrained & stopped by their own earth & body mass in which something fixed is hidden. Now to avoid being accused of contradiction by some who are not yet familiar with the common terms of our masters, I want to explain by warning them that I in no way intend that this volatile spirituality is what I have previously called sulfur volatile & separable, which is one of the authors of corruption. But only the simplest part of this primary vapor, which never loses its internal subtlety & acuity, whose natural thing is to rise & tend towards perfection. Because to sublimate properly according to the true sense of the Philosophers is nothing other than to perfect, & to exalt matters from imperfection to perfection. Just as Mercury has its elevable substance, so it has its fixable substance.

As for the first, it is innate to him of itself: But as for the second even if he has it at his center (that is to say in potential) it cannot however come out in fact if we the help of art. And to show more clearly by what means Nature proceeds in its operations, I consider it very reasonable to say here something about the causes and ways of fixation. Taking up therefore this axiom undoubtedly alleged from the beginning of this book, that in the order and constitution of the world an infallible and perpetual rule is observed, that everything that has life must have some duration in it, and that nothing is produced under Heaven which does not have any kind of life in itself, I will say that this duration is by preservation in perpetuity. For the goal of Nature is to want to perpetuate, being the characteristic of the good author to always want to preserve the work of his hands, until he has reached the end of old age, and until the light of life is extinguished by the cold mist of death, at the feet of which it is necessary for all nascent things to prostrate themselves, by this inevitable law imposed on everything that has a beginning, to come to an end.

That if things remained in their first extreme, which is being born or beginning, without advancing to the second, which is dying or ending, everything would remain in its Chaos, or to put it better, nothing would consist, and would be the principles of any subject useless, even destroyed by themselves. To avoid this inconvenience Nature has established this order & progression of things, being in continual action & motion, that is to say conservation & perpetuation. But what extends life and even what preserves it, cannot be without some lasting fixation & consistency against the onslaught of destruction. And this conservative essence is in some species more fixed than others, for which reason they have a longer and more durable life, as well as more difficult to destroy or mortify: as well as the Deer and the Raven among the animals: The oak among plants: & Gold between minerals. What comes to them from the composition of the elements in them is more equal and more digestible, so that the death of which is proper to divide and disjoin cannot so easily enter into these compounds too firmly linked and cemented by strong digestion. And the more bodies are provided with these two remedies, the less they are subject to accidents of mortal corruption.

But because Nature cannot of itself achieve the perfection of this union & digestion, it also cannot in any way save or guarantee bodies from final destruction. Now the industry of art which has always overcome it (even though it is driven by it, and cannot do anything on its own) considering these things has endeavored to imitate it and surpass it by the own course of his same way. For seeing that in all bodies the conservation & prolongation of life was done by something tending to fixation, which itself proceeded by union & digestion, (because nothing can be fixed if it is not homogeneous & of a single Nature, the artist imagined & practiced finding the same fixable thing, & leading it to perfect fixation by the same paths, order, & operation of Nature, namely by the separation of the strange parts, by uniting the homogeneous by long & ingenious digestion united things. But especially since there was no way of separating it or extracting it from individual and specific bodies because of this compact union, and digestion already too advanced in them, he was forced to look for it in the sides of the mother who engenders it, namely the earth, from which all things proceed.

Because to draw it from elsewhere in its entire and first virtue would be a useless work, and something at all impossible, and to think of giving it back to it would be a long and very doubtful work. Which made a certain Poet rightly say: Here, or nowhere is what we will ask. And the more bodies are provided with these two remedies, the less they are subject to accidents of mortal corruption. But because Nature cannot of itself achieve the perfection of this union & digestion, it also cannot in any way save or guarantee bodies from final destruction. Now the industry of art which has always overcome it (even though it is driven by it, and cannot do anything on its own) considering these things has endeavored to imitate it and surpass it by the own course of his same way. For seeing that in all bodies the conservation & prolongation of life was done by something tending to fixation, which itself proceeded by union & digestion, (because nothing can be fixed if it is not homogeneous & of a single Nature, the artist imagined & practiced finding the same fixable thing, & leading it to perfect fixation by the same paths, order, & operation of Nature, namely by the separation of the strange parts, by uniting the homogeneous by long & ingenious digestion united things.

But especially since there was no way of separating it or extracting it from individual and specific bodies because of this compact union, and digestion already too advanced in them, he was forced to look for it in the sides of the mother who engenders it, namely the earth, from which all things proceed. Because to draw it from elsewhere in its entire and first virtue would be a useless work, and something at all impossible, and to think of giving it back to it would be a long and very doubtful work. Which made a certain Poet rightly say: Here, or nowhere is what we will ask. And the more bodies are provided with these two remedies, the less they are subject to accidents of mortal corruption. But because Nature cannot of itself achieve the perfection of this union & digestion, it also cannot in any way save or guarantee bodies from final destruction. Now the industry of art which has always overcome it (even though it is driven by it, and cannot do anything on its own) considering these things has endeavored to imitate it and surpass it by the own course of his same way.

For seeing that in all bodies the conservation & prolongation of life was done by something tending to fixation, which itself proceeded by union & digestion, (because nothing can be fixed if it is not homogeneous & of a single Nature, the artist imagined & practiced finding the same fixable thing, & leading it to perfect fixation by the same paths, order, & operation of Nature, namely by the separation of the strange parts, by uniting the homogeneous by long & ingenious digestion united things. But especially since there was no way of separating it or extracting it from individual and specific bodies because of this compact union, and digestion already too advanced in them, he was forced to look for it in the sides of the mother who engenders it, namely the earth, from which all things proceed. Because to draw it from elsewhere in its entire and first virtue would be a useless work, and something at all impossible, and to think of giving it back to it would be a long and very doubtful work. Which made a certain Poet rightly say: Here, or nowhere is what we will ask.

he was forced to seek it in the flanks of the mother who engenders it, namely the earth, from which all things proceed. Because to extract from him his entire and first virtue would be a useless work, and something completely impossible, and to think of giving it back to him would be a long and very doubtful work. Who made a certain Poet rightly say: Here, or nowhere is what we ask. he was forced to seek it in the flanks of the mother who engenders it, namely the earth, from which all things proceed. Because to extract from him his entire and first virtue would be a useless work, and something completely impossible, and to think of giving it back to him would be a long and very doubtful work. Who made a certain Poet rightly say: Here, or nowhere is what we ask.

And truly those who have followed stray and tortuous paths have been greatly deceived, amusing themselves by the common meaning or rind of the words of the wise, and not by the living marrow of their intention. They must therefore first sacrifice to the infernal Juno; because there was the head and the source of things. The prudent and better understood begin all their works with the root, and not with the branches: Eliminating (as the learned Bacon says) a thing on which Nature has only begun its first operations, by the assembly & proportional mixture of a pure & lively mercury, with similar sulfurs frozen in solid mass: O sacred words, in which this good Englishman, or rather this good Angel, has clearly depicted this unique & true matter of which all the Philosophers have written so many volumes under various figures, & fabulous enigmas: not to hide it maliciously, but to reserve the privilege of this knowledge for the learned and pious; who, having once discovered it through their assiduous study and dear experiences, disguise it and adorn it in their turn.

And to leave the opinion to the masters only through ignorance, I bring this passage to this place improperly, and take Martre for Fox, wanting to understand that this matter so ingeniously represented by Bacon is this first and general Spirit that I took for subject of this book: I will beg them to believe that I know well that the difference there is between the father & the son, or between the begetter & producer & what he produced & begot. Daring to say without vanity that I know both by reason and experience. Because the wise man wanted to instruct the inquisitors of the mineral principles for the making of the Philosophers' stone, discovering to them the first metallic matter prepared, composed, & specified by Nature, and I deal with the universal matter not yet specified, which can properly be say raw material of this first metallic matter as being this general genus of genres so celebrated by Raymond Lulle: but I used this sentence for example & authority, without however there being anything absurd, since this universal Spirit is the common father of mercury & sulfur contained & proportioned by Nature in this unique subject of the masters.

Now I want the curious artist to consider two things here, one to choose by subtle imagination a Nature that is vivifying and capable of involving all bodies, the other to choose a thing that can of itself vivify and re-generate . And do not however want to understand that it is necessary to take two diverse and separate things or matters, namely one agent, and the other patient, but only one which has the two virtues together of vivifying and being vivified. As for active vivification I have already spoken sufficiently about it: but as for passive I say that every principle must have its origin in itself, because if it were born elsewhere it would no longer be a principle. And since he gives being to all things it is necessary that in generating them, he draws from himself this replenishment & perpetual plenitude, because of which he is in continual action & movement to vivification, which prevents him to die, because he is never abandoned by himself, having his movement from him & within him.

What Macrobius subtly disputed about the dream of Scipio attaching itself to the soul of man, although the dispute can be adapted even better to my intention, making it serve for the soul the spirit of the world, which is the subject I am dealing with. By what from these same arguments I will draw this: Everything that moves of itself is a principle of movement & in continual life, he who is in continual life can only have vivification from himself, he is therefore himself vivifiable? But the general Spirit of the world is such. And since he converts himself into a body in the earth, or to better say that he takes his seat there to corporify himself and convert himself into earth in which, (as Hermes says) all his virtues, action, and qualities remain entire, it follows that being vital, it itself replenishes itself with life by multiplying by its own virtue. What we see in this universal Mercury which always feeds and replenishes itself in its mining, so that even if we extract from it what we can, if it will grow again as much as before, and in wherever it is thrown, it will never fail there.

Not that I mean that it is generated from the earth, but in the earth, through all the parts of which it creeps and constantly spreads by multiplication and vegetation. What the ancients wanted to mean by this serpent that Moses himself said was gliding on the earth and feeding on the dust of it. This is what moved the cabalists to call it the Pincer of the Sepulchres, especially since it devours and consumes the recumbent bodies when it converts them into earth. Not that dead bodies nor the earth are its food, but they are the seat where it feeds and nourishes itself. This is the place where it moves, turns, and flows without rest, of which Medea warns Jason, saying to him: What Macrobius subtly disputed about the dream of Scipio attaching itself to the soul of man, although the dispute can be adapted even better to my intention, making it serve for the soul the spirit of the world, which is the subject I am dealing with. By what from these same arguments I will draw this: Everything that moves of itself is a principle of movement & in continual life, he who is in continual life can only have vivification from himself, he is therefore himself vivifiable? But the general Spirit of the world is such.

And since he converts himself into a body in the earth, or to better say that he takes his seat there to corporify himself and convert himself into earth in which, (as Hermes says) all his virtues, action, and qualities remain entire, it follows that being vital, it itself replenishes itself with life by multiplying by its own virtue. What we see in this universal Mercury which always feeds and replenishes itself in its mining, so that even if we extract from it what we can, if it will grow again as much as before, and in wherever it is thrown, it will never fail there. Not that I mean that it is generated from the earth, but in the earth, through all the parts of which it creeps and constantly spreads by multiplication and vegetation. What the ancients wanted to mean by this serpent that Moses himself said was gliding on the earth and feeding on the dust of it.

This is what moved the cabalists to call it the Pincer of the Sepulchres, especially since it devours and consumes the recumbent bodies when it converts them into earth. Not that dead bodies nor the earth are its food, but they are the seat where it feeds and nourishes itself. This is the place where it moves, turns, and flows without rest, of which Medea warns Jason, saying to him: What Macrobius subtly disputed about the dream of Scipio attaching itself to the soul of man, although the dispute can be adapted even better to my intention, making it serve for the soul the spirit of the world, which is the subject I am dealing with. By what from these same arguments I will draw this: Everything that moves of itself is a principle of movement & in continual life, he who is in continual life can only have vivification from himself, he is therefore himself vivifiable? But the general Spirit of the world is such. And since he converts himself into a body in the earth, or to better say that he takes his seat there to corporify himself and convert himself into earth in which, (as Hermes says) all his virtues, action, and qualities remain entire, it follows that being vital, it itself replenishes itself with life by multiplying by its own virtue.

What we see in this universal Mercury which always feeds and replenishes itself in its mining, so that even if we extract from it what we can, if it will grow again as much as before, and in wherever it is thrown, it will never fail there. Not that I mean that it is generated from the earth, but in the earth, through all the parts of which it creeps and constantly spreads by multiplication and vegetation. What the ancients wanted to mean by this serpent that Moses himself said was gliding on the earth and feeding on the dust of it. This is what moved the cabalists to call it the Pincer of the Sepulchres, especially since it devours and consumes the recumbent bodies when it converts them into earth. Not that dead bodies nor the earth are its food, but they are the seat where it feeds and nourishes itself. This is the place where it moves, turns, and flows without rest, of which Medea warns Jason, saying to him: Not that I mean that it is generated from the earth, but in the earth, through all the parts of which it creeps and constantly spreads by multiplication and vegetation.

What the ancients wanted to mean by this serpent that Moses himself said was gliding on the earth and feeding on the dust of it. This is what moved the cabalists to call it the Pincer of the Sepulchres, especially since it devours and consumes the recumbent bodies when it converts them into earth. Not that dead bodies nor the earth are its food, but they are the seat where it feeds and nourishes itself. This is the place where it moves, turns, and flows without rest, of which Medea warns Jason, saying to him: Not that I mean that it is generated from the earth, but in the earth, through all the parts of which it creeps and constantly spreads by multiplication and vegetation. What the ancients wanted to mean by this serpent that Moses himself said was gliding on the earth and feeding on the dust of it. This is what moved the cabalists to call it the Pincer of the Sepulchres, especially since it devours and consumes the recumbent bodies when it converts them into earth. Not that dead bodies nor the earth are its food, but they are the seat where it feeds and nourishes itself. This is the place where it moves, turns, and flows without rest, of which Medea warns Jason, saying to him:

See the Dragon watching, with frenzied fury,
Whose noisy scale has his body surrounded,
Whose throat hissing smoke and fire loosens:
And who in twisted folds goes yawning the earth
From his broad chest, in the powder imprinting
The sinuous furrows that he traces incessantly.

I wanted to bring these two considerations into play, not only to show what the research of this Mercury must be, but also to verify that what it contains that is fixable in it is nothing other than this vivifying essence. , which being duly fixed perpetuates & preserves life in all bodies where it enters, by dispelling excrement by its purity & perfecting imperfect things by its perfection. The aim of both natural and artificial fixation is perpetuation & conservation, which is done by means of the tincture that Mercury acquires through this fixation. For the dye is truly life, and life is nothing other than that which covers, paints, and colors the body with this complexion which makes it appear vital; & which is lost & tarnished at the approach of death.

This is why Nature wanted the blood in which life consists to be dyed red, and that the more it was pure, clear and vivid in redness, the body would appear and be in fact healthier, more beautiful, more disposed, and more vigorous. As, on the contrary, being by accident disturbed, thickened, and charged with harsh blackness, or changed into false colors, the body felt and suffered the rigor of the evil within, and gave evidence of it to the outside by its discoloration. We notice the similarity to plants whose vital vigor appears in their lively greenness, whose change denounces decadence, and progress towards their death. The same is true of metals, whose perfection or imperfection is discernible by their colors.

Gold has in itself a magnetic force which attracts hearts by the brilliant luster of its sparkling and pure dye, in which Nature has displayed all the best it could, having however reserved for the art industry the overcome again, even to infinity, by the supreme graduation which it adds to this natural splendor which acquires the name of terrestrial Sun. The artist therefore exalts by his labor the orange color in which Nature has limited her power in this precious masterpiece to the highest degree of obscure redness, by which increase imperfect metals are colored in a certain quality to the natural degree by the protection of this artificial dye, clearly showing that this citrine color that Nature has introduced into gold is only a route to redness, where lies the height of the perfect virtue of preserving & multiplying. Who is the cause that this metal, although excellent over all the others, cannot deprive them of perfection, nor place conservation in human bodies, as many thousands of opponents, alchemists, and lazy Physicists have too truly presumed & published, some with their amalgams, fusion, & sophistic dissolutions, & others with their fantastic infusions, & ridiculous confections. But if these two species of curious people had plunged a little more deeply into this ocean of wonders, they would have recognized that the supreme acquired redness is an inseparable accident, producing both miracles through the excess of its heat which however only consumes impure superfluities, and not the substance of bodies, which on the contrary it maintains and multiplies in all equality, although the philosophers say it is as much above the vulgar fire as the vulgar is above it. the natural warmth of animals.

It is very true that Paracelsus in his treatise on Tinctures makes much of that which he extracts from gold by the spirit of wine, and attributes to it many beautiful virtues, as well as to those of antimony and coral. To which he seems to want to prefer that of Mercury, which he says becomes any tincture once brought to perfect fixation, and which it penetrates bodies through their simplest parts because of its pure subtlety. What I do not believe at all is that he heard about the common Mercury, as well as that of the wise, to which only art helping nature can introduce these two things, namely perfect dyeing and accomplished fixation.

The tincture is therefore, strictly speaking, the pure substance of things, and the body is only the excrement. This is clearly manifested in that bodies after the separation of their tincture remain useless, without virtue, and corruptible; just like carrion deprived of life, movement, & vital color. By which we can say that the tincture is the aim of the fixation: so that by its permanent assiduity to the fire it acquires perpetuation & conservation in the body which receives it. Now the way to achieve this degree of fixation where the accomplishment of the whole work lies, is none other than to prudently preserve light and fleeting things, and patiently accustom them to the fire until they can suffer very violently. This is why all the good Authors preach nothing to their disciples other than patience, which they say is on the part of God, and haste on the part of the devil. On which I will say as an infallible maxim that nothing can be fixed without previous calcination, which must be done by the conjunction of the fixable spirit with something entirely suitable to its nature, & which can retain it in the calcination fire, so that by this means accustoming him little by little to sustaining the heat, he is more apt to tolerate the increase in the final fire which gives fixation.

And the reason why we must proceed with this discretion is that wanting to rush this operation too quickly, the special spirituality which causes the tincture would fly away, abandoning its body without being able to imprint its tincture virtue on it. So that it would necessarily be necessary to give back to this examined body a new spirit, before being able to introduce the desired color, which is one of the greatest secrets of spagyric art, because it is the mind which colors by means of fire, and not anything else whatsoever. Now this tincture accomplished & sovereignly exalted in our Mercury, it follows that it rises to the supreme degree of perfections or even (to speak like Hermes) that it ascends to Heaven. So that after having endured all the mortal torments, he took on a new life. That is to say, having made him pass the dark straits of putrefaction, buried in the sepulcher of a vessel, he nevertheless rises to resurrection by the stripping of all mortiferous and corrupting things, by means of which he has reached the sovereign degree of excellence.

This is done by separating the earth from the fire, the subtle from the thick, and then by fixing the parts thus purified with graduated heat. But to speak without ambiguity or enigmas, this ascent to Heaven (which is the sublimation & exaltation of these parts developed to perfection) would never take place if the separation & purification of them had not preceded, & given rise to the fixation which is the extreme & final goal to which art aspires. From which we note that it is done for two main purposes: one to perpetuate the tincture the other to separate and extract from Mercury the volatile and burnable sulfur which is in its center, and which would not want to leave if it was not bothered by the long action of the continual fire, which must be regulated, lest the violent precipitation raise from the beginning the pure spirit of Mercury, not yet strengthened. What the Count of Marche Trévisane openly taught, saying: that the fleeing do not fly before the pursuer, and that the fire is made in many ways as it wants to be made.

That is to say that the spiritual part is not forced by untempered ardor to abandon the bodily part which must finally fix it by the action of its internal sulfur aided by the external & common fire, discreetly led by the required degrees: where the main industry of the operation lies. But (someone will say) if the fixation acquires with this penetrating subtlety a permanence in the fire, how is it possible that afterwards it can once again be sublimated? let him have wax wings again, and we will see that he will have no rest until he rises from the ground to try to escape the tower where he is locked up. However, let us be careful that he does not want to rise too suddenly, for fear that the Sun will melt the wax and burn his feathers, precipitating him into the sea. We will therefore do like the wise Dédalle observing the middle of the two extremes: d as much as if the flight is low, the humidity of the waves will weigh down its wings, and if it is high, the fire will burn them. Was it not the impatient and blind desire that Icarus had to get ahead of Daedallus which lost him despite the paternal precept, and from which proceeded the pernicious stumble of Phaëton guiding the horses of Phoebus, if not for having considered himself more capable of this behavior than the master who taught it? who told him:

To go this way not elsewhere I confess to you:

Only note the traces of my wheel:
And to give everywhere equal heat
Too soon towards earth & Heaven neither rises nor falls:
Because by climbing Heaven too high you will burn:
And falling too far down the earth will destroy.
But if in the middle your career remains
The source is more united & the path surer.

However, it is not enough to have said these things, although true, according to the mystical sense of our predecessors. I must explain their intention shrouded in the obscure veil of these fabulous words, which are only for experts in the profession. Know therefore all curious people, and never leave this list, that when Hermes said that this thing ascends from earth to Heaven, then again descends from Heaven to earth acquiring the virtues of both together, he did not understood by this rise that the matter must elevate or sublimate at the top of the vessel: But only that by giving it back after it has reached perfect fixation certain portion of its spiritual part (of which the Hortulain says that one must have good quantity & in reserve for this purpose) it will dissolve & become entirely spiritual, leaving its earthly consistency to take on the aerial which is the Heaven of the Philosophers then having reached such simplicity, it will be frozen & brought back to earth by a new decoction which is will do by the same degrees of heat, until the body has so embraced the Spirit that they are made inseparable, thus it will have celestial subtlety, and earthly fixation.

Always following the full path of nature, if this Icarus could not be raised at all (that is to say subtly) he will have to strengthen his wings, joining new feathers with new wax: that is to say by repeated dissolution, which the masters repeat so often that they seem importunate: except to those who understand the consequence of such repetition. This is done to better unite things by mixing them through their smallest parts. What we could not achieve otherwise, any more than the commixture of the two without the purification of one and the other, however keeping exactly the volatility in the spirit freed from earthly impurities: & acquiring whole attachment to the body stripped of all internal faeces. It is therefore through dissolution that this thing ascends to Heaven, and through freezing that it descends to earth. Which is naively expressed by two ancient Latin verses, which I explained in this quatrain:

If the fixed you know how to dissolve, And the dissolved make it fly: Then wanting to fix it into powder, You have something to console yourself.

This body thus glorified will therefore ascend to Heaven on the wings of its spirit, then in the same perfection as it ascended there, it will descend to earth to separate the good from the bad, to preserve & vivify the one, to kill & consume the other. That is to say that in all the bodies into which it enters, it expels impurity, amending and preserving the pure substance of them, because the repeated solutions and fixations will have given it the force to penetrate the bodies, in which otherwise he could not have entered. It is therefore necessary to immerse the young Hermaphrodite and the delicate Salmacis in the fountain, so that they kiss each other and Salmacis, delighted with contentment, can say: May this beautiful adolescent never be separated from me, nor I from him ; & that in mutual felicity love perpetuates our conjunction: thus our two bodies will have only one heart & one face.

Then make the island of Delos appear motionless, carrying Apollo & Diana that Latona gave birth to there. Fable which does not want to teach us anything other than that we freeze & fix this dissolved matter, in which the Sun & Moon of the Philosophers are contained. I do not intend (as I have already said) that the Reader of this book thinks of finding the Mines of Peru to satisfy his greed: although in several places I have shown the dessillés enough that I do not I am in no way ignorant of the true paths, although I have yet to resolve to undertake such a long journey; for certain reasons consistent with those which prevented the good Trevisan from the space of two years after he had perfect knowledge of it through books. I am therefore only displaying here a precious drug, or rather an inestimable treasure that pious Nature gives us for the maintenance & prolongation of our life, for which she has received from God the charge & general protection.

What I do in truth comes from a laudable desire to serve the public with all my industry, after the favorable Star of experience has led me to the salutary port where I try to address the curious. Because I have sometimes treated this universal spirit so happily that with a very small quantity I have relieved a hundred people almost overwhelmed with various infirmities: there is no doubt that an infinity of excellent spirits have entered well into this deep forest crossed by obscure paths, which seeing it filled with terrible monsters were so astonished that turning back they were amused by such a useful enterprise. As with a learned and ingenious brush mystically depicted the kind Poliphile, whose courage, however, having never wavered under all these Panic terrors, gave him the audacity to cross either side of this forest black: & overcoming all obstacles led him safely to the pleasant & desired stay of his dear Polia, enclosed by the rich temple of Vesta. I admit that the path he took is open to everyone, but not everyone like him has the Ariadne net to guide them around this labyrinth & not everyone is a Theseus to be able to overcome the Minotaur . It is certain that Nature (as a very charitable mother) proposes and offers to all this precious and unique treasure of life, and God, universal father, keeps the door of this fatal cave wide open for all in all seasons.

From which the descent is common and easy to all,
But from whom the exit is a difficult thing:
In one the work is seen, in the other is the labor:
Few men begotten of the Gods have had this work,
For those whom Jupiter the just loves & supports:
Where the wing of virtues carries to the Stars.

We must therefore first find this brilliant branch dedicated to the infernal Juno: of which Virgil says:

That the whole forest is covered with its shadows,
Enclosed by thick, dark, and dark ramparts:
Without which it is not permitted to descend
into underground places. You then who want to go
Seeking the virtue of the secrets of Nature,
Through the unknown horror of many obscure paths,
Where the flavor of the Heavens alone can advance you,
Seek it with the eyes of a sublime thought,
And having discovered it , your pure and unblemished hand
Grasp it in reverence, and quickly snatch it,
For it willingly follows the happy one who handed it over,
Since the destinies once allowed it:
Otherwise, there is no force or iron that detaches it,
And the harder we seek it & the stronger it hides.

Now if nature took care to hide these things, for fear that they would be prostituted indifferently to all, and that the pigs would come to flower the marjoram, or, as they say, to dig in the garden where the roses grow, we should not be surprised that ancient and modern sages have studied to weave so many fabulous veils and enigmatic figures to cover them by showing them: because they knew well that ceremonious Nature does not want us to see her naked. Otherwise it would never have taken the trouble to mask itself with so many diverse forms and different species, so that by the infinity of these variable figures, its venerable secrets were preserved from the contempt ordinarily common to things that are too common. This is why I still treat it here with the same solemnity and restraint, so as not to fall into the peril of the one who divulged the secret mysteries of the Eleusinian Goddesses, which no mortal is yet permitted to clarify, because They always want to remain secret and chaste, and not see themselves abandoned to public use like shameless courtesans.

And if I speak about it worthily in my turn, those who are advanced in the inquisition of such secrets will easily judge it, because experience is the true and irreproachable mistress of things. Moreover, one should not find it strange if I have sometimes authorized natural & spagyric operations by some conformity that they have with the sacred mysteries of Christianity, which I in no way intend to profane, but on the contrary to celebrate their excellence & make them touchable with the testimonies of the care that the eternal author of the world had to provide for the salvation of souls and bodies. Who moved certain very learned authors to describe that true Chemistry (which Paracelsus calls Spagyric) follows step by step the train of the gospel, because by its means, with the help of fire, all powerful works are tested virtues of Nature, which even the ancients insinuated in their old Theologies: like the Bacmans & Gymnosophists in their Gymnosophy: & especially the Egyptians.

For the magic of all Paganism, nor the fabulous involutions of the Poets were, and did not mean anything other than the discourse of this entire book. What the learned and subtle Brachesco diligently examined, although the envious Toladanus wrote against it, after having seen himself disappointed in the experience of the secret which through importunity he believed he had extracted from him: having imagined that he considered the foam of common salt to be the Mercury of the wise, since he had assured him that it comes from a vile thing, of little price, and that one throws out in the streets. Not taking care that the discreet masters designate their true material by giving it the name of all the metals, without any deception: for those who know it know too well that it contains all seven together and I would gladly ask them if they believe that the Cosmopolitan had heard of common Steel, when he said in his enigma, that Neptune showed him under a rock two hidden mines, one of Gold and the other of Steel.

He is too clever a man to have had such a frivolous thought: but he named the material by this name for the conformity which its polished luster has with steel. And truly it would have been a thing very unworthy of the name of wise in Brachesco to discover in a moment a secret that could have been bought two thirds of his age. But in order for me to say my part of the meaning covered under these Mythologies, let us not see clearly that the ancient Demogorgon father of all the Gods, or rather of all the members of the world, who is said to live in the center of the earth, covered with a green and ferruginous covering, feeding all kinds of animals, is nothing other than the universal Spirit which from the belly of Cahos obeying the voice of the Lord shed light on the Heavens, the Elements, and everything that is in them, which he has always since maintained & vivified & because he truly lodges in the middle of the earth, as I amply declared at the beginning of this book, that is to say in the center of the world where he is placed as if in his throne, and from where, as if from the heart of this great body, and seat of universal life, he produces, animates, and nourishes everything: But this green and ferrugine mantle with which he is clothed, can it be imagined something other than the surface of the earth that it envelops, which is blackish and iron-colored, enamelled and painted with all kinds of herbs and flowers.

Virgil, perfectly instructed in all these mystical secrets, gave to this Spirit or soul of the world the name of Jupiter, which he had his pastor Damete invoke for the principle of his songs, especially (he said) that from him all things are fulfilled. And this god of the forests Pan, adored by shepherds, may be held for the same thing. Because in addition to this name which means everything, he is also made lord of the forests, because the Greeks held him as rector of Cahos which they otherwise called Hilé, meaning a forest. Orpheus in his Hymn therefore calls it: Do we not see clearly that the ancient Demogorgon father of all the Gods, or rather of all the members of the world, who is said to live in the center of the earth, covered with a green and ferruginous covering, nourishing all kinds of animals, is nothing other than the universal Spirit which from the belly of Cahos obeying the voice of the Lord brought to light the Heavens, the Elements, and everything that is in them, which it has always since maintained & vivified & because he truly lodges in the middle of the earth, as I amply declared at the beginning of this book, that is to say in the center of the world where he is placed as in his throne, and from where as from the heart of this great body, & seat of universal life it produces, animates, & nourishes everything: But this green & ferrugine mantle with which it is covered, can anything be imagined other than the surface area of ​​the earth that it envelope, which is blackish and iron-colored, enameled and painted with all kinds of herbs and flowers.

Virgil, perfectly instructed in all these mystical secrets, gave to this Spirit or soul of the world the name of Jupiter, which he had his pastor Damete invoke for the principle of his songs, especially (he said) that from him all things are fulfilled. And this god of the forests Pan, adored by shepherds, may be held for the same thing. Because in addition to this name which means everything, he is also made lord of the forests, because the Greeks held him as rector of Cahos which they otherwise called Hilé, meaning a forest. Orpheus in his Hymn therefore calls it: Do we not see clearly that the ancient Demogorgon father of all the Gods, or rather of all the members of the world, who is said to live in the center of the earth, covered with a green and ferruginous covering, nourishing all kinds of animals, is nothing other than the universal Spirit which from the belly of Cahos obeying the voice of the Lord brought to light the Heavens, the Elements, and everything that is in them, which it has always since maintained & vivified & because he truly lodges in the middle of the earth, as I amply declared at the beginning of this book, that is to say in the center of the world where he is placed as in his throne, and from where as from the heart of this great body, & seat of universal life it produces, animates, & nourishes everything: But this green & ferrugine mantle with which it is covered, can anything be imagined other than the surface area of ​​the earth that it envelope, which is blackish and iron-colored, enameled and painted with all kinds of herbs and flowers.

Virgil, perfectly instructed in all these mystical secrets, gave to this Spirit or soul of the world the name of Jupiter, which he had his pastor Damete invoke for the principle of his songs, especially (he said) that from him all things are fulfilled. And this god of the forests Pan, adored by shepherds, may be held for the same thing. Because in addition to this name which means everything, he is also made lord of the forests, because the Greeks held him as rector of Cahos which they otherwise called Hilé, meaning a forest. Orpheus in his Hymn therefore calls it: because the Greeks held him as rector of Cahos which they otherwise called Hilé, meaning a forest. Orpheus in his Hymn therefore calls it: because the Greeks held him as rector of Cahos which they otherwise called Hilé, meaning a forest. Orpheus in his Hymn therefore calls it:

By the strong, the subtle, the whole, the universal.
All air, all water, all earth, and all immortal fire,
Which becomes with time within even a throne,
To the lower kingdom, to the middle, to the supreme,
Concerning, engendering, producing, keeping everything:
Principle in all, of all, who overcomes everything.
Germ of fire, air, earth, & waves.
Great spirit enlivening all the members of the world,
Who goes from all to all changing natures,
For universal soul in all bodies housing it,
To which you give being, & movement, & life:
Proving by a thousand effects your infinite power.

Saturn, son of Coelie & Vesta, (who are Heaven & Earth) & husband of Opis his sister, (who is this helping & preserving virtue of everything) represents the same Demogorgon. For his children whom he devours and then vomits again, are these not the bodies to which he gave being in each of the three genera, which in their end are reduced in him, to reproduce new ones: so that by this perpetual vicissitude, can the order established from the creation of the world be forever maintained and preserved?

He is painted hoary and sordid, his head covered, his hand armed with a scythe: and for his motto he is given a snake which curves into a circular figure and bites its tail. He is truly very old, since he is the principle of everything: He has white hair and beard, which grow on him as he sees in many places, neither more nor less than germinating things. He is sordid and unclean in himself, because of the earthly filth that joins him, full of sulphurous and corrupting abuse. His head is covered. That is to say that the head of his perfection is hidden under the veil of his impurity, which makes him unknown to many, adds the difficulty of his obscure research.

His scythe is the biting ponticity with which he slices and devours everything. And the serpent that bites its tail is its regenerating virtue and nature, by which it replenishes and regenerates itself, as is said of the Phoenix, because of which it is sometimes given this name. So that it is always as if in a round and inefficient growth, crawling through the earth like serpents. I can already hear someone standing up to me and saying that the intention of the inventors of this fabulous description of Saturn, which they took for lead, is very misconceived in my opinion. Especially since according to the writings of all the scientists in the generation of metals, it is the oldest & first born of all, by the natural freezing of Mercury in the veins of the rocks.

Which devours all the others because of its rawness which makes it abundant in Salt, because it is from Salt that this biting & devouring action comes; as he is sufficiently tested by the cups of the refiners, where he vomits back the Gold & Silver, which he indeed had the power to swallow, but not to consume & destroy, because in their decoction they acquired a firmness & fixation capable of resisting the feeble heat of his hungry stomach. I do not entirely disapprove of this meaning, especially since it is consistent in some points with the above-mentioned description, but not being consistent in all as is the one I deciphered, I am convinced that if we go through the judgment experts, the denial will not be for months Maye represented the earth, so called, as grandmother or great mother from whom this spirit or universal Mercury takes its birth from the pure & invisible seed of Jupiter, which is air.

Because it truly comes out of her by this means, as this learned Cosinopolitan explains very discreetly in his rich treatises. This Mercury is painted with wings in several places, to show that it is elusive & volatile by its nature. His head is covered with a hat, for the same reasons that I previously alleged when speaking of Saturn. He wears a caduceus & fatal rod twisted with serpents, both to signify his renewing virtue, and for what I said about the serpent of Saturn.

With which rod he opens Heaven & Earth; & gives death & life. Now this rod represents the powerful Nature, by which ascending to Heaven and descending to hell, that is to say on earth, he acquires the virtues of superior and inferior things. By this same power he draws the souls of the Orc, puts him to sleep, and closes his eyes with an Eternal sleep, as Virgil sings. Also it is called by some Theriacus & Venom, namely death & life; according to the use and doses of it, because all life consists of Temperance and justice, and death in excess, which is their opposite. There are an infinity of similar mysteries in this pagan Theology which have no other goal than that at which I aim.

But we would need a large separate volume: & I fear boring the Reader with too frequent repetitions of the same things. It will therefore be enough for me to have superficially discussed this little, to make it known that all these mythological commentaries with their allegorical historical meanings, & other fanciful reveries, have never proven wrong or undermined the secret Poetic fixations, most of which do not are invented only to covertly insinuate the admirable operations of spagyric nature. Like among others that of Jason & Medea, according to the testimony of Suïdas elegantly reported by Crisogone Polidore in his preface on the works of Geber. In favor of which I will dispense with the promised silence, to declare that this name of Medea means cogitation, meditation, or investigation, drawing its derivation from a word which means Principle, Origin, source, or reason. For any meditation, cogitation, or investigation must undoubtedly have some principle or reason as a foundation on which it is based, & from which it comes: giving it the opportunity to carry out such research with rationalization.

This Medea taught Jason (who is the inquisitor or Philosopher) two things in which all Philosophy consists. The first is to conquer the Golden Fleece, which is the art intended for metallic transmutations with mineral things. The second is the restoration of bodies debilitated by diseases; by curing them quickly & perfectly: then restoring to them this youth or first vigor allented, & almost extinguished by the cold aconite of the years: Chasing out of bodies by this uniquely universal medicine, all humors & corrupted & corrupting superfluity which lead them to their end, most often precipitated by the excess of such unforeseen accidents.

These two miraculous effects were achieved & accomplished by Jason, religiously observing the useful advice of the wise Medea: however after a long & laborious navigation followed by infinite perilous chances, because of the dragon & the Bulls that he had to tame. Now this navigation is the painful and dubious experience of things, where we often sail all the time of life without being able to arrive at the port of this immense sea of ​​Nature. These monstrous Bulls which must be subjugated and coupled to the yoke, are the furnaces where the operations must be carried out; which naively represent the head of a Bull, and throw fire through the eyes and throat, as the fable says.

Because it is necessary that there be vents through which the degrees of heat are regulated, and the fire preserved from suffocation, especially since if one is not master of the fire many accidents will happen during the course of the work, which would defraud the worker of his expectations. I can speak about it as an expert: because of the nine vessels that I put into decoction to find the true degree of heat, all eight perished, and only the one remained to me by means of which the experiments of which I have above were made. speak. This dragon, always watching over it, is this general Mercury that Cadmus once knew how to kill, that is to say fix. The field of Mars where the teeth of the martial serpent had to be closed is nothing other than the vessel in which these soldiers armed with sharp spears rise. Which vessel must not be in this place a glass still as Pollidore thinks and says, but a form of Cabacet as the fable says, narrow at the bottom and widening greatly at the top. And it must be of good, well-fired clay: and not of iron or glass.

At the bottom of which will rise an armed camp bristling with spears, which seem horribly irritated, lying against each other to fight as in the middle of a battlefield. This is what the Poet ingeniously invented, to make the vulgar admire as very strange and unprecedented, a thing so familiar, that if I named it they would make fun of him and me. But after Jason had accomplished his labors, he still had to put to sleep the watchful dragon who guarded the Golden Fleece, and make him doze so that neither fire nor smoke issued from his throat. Which he did by drowning it in the Stigian waters, that is to say, by redissolving & refixing it with his spirit.

So Jason had nothing left to possess the Golden Fleece, & rejuvenate his father Aeson, suffering from extreme old age, if not a single labor that Medea taught him to crown his good offices, it was the fermentation & conjunction of the butter of the Sun with the paste of this prepared Mercury; which in itself is not capable of producing two such excellent effects: being, in truth, only the earth where we must sow the pure wheat that Nature has produced and led to the perfection which is granted to it. Through this last labor he finally saw himself master of this double treasure, which he took gloriously to the place of his birth: with which he filled himself with wealth and his old father with vigorous health, banishing from him the importunate languor that trails after self the long age. I will therefore now let Jason and his Medea enjoy their happiness, and will only say that nothing could be expressed by this dragon watching and throwing fire through the throat, more properly than our mind or Mercury, which is the most beautiful thing in the world. lively & inflammable, being on this occasion called fiery water, or of life, because as Brachesco says that it burns suddenly before its coagulation, & is not vine water hand of life, because it vivifies everything.

That if we contemplate it in its apparent surface, who will ever think that there is something fixed and non-consumable in it, seeing that so slightly it lights up and vanishes at the slightest touch of fire? Nor that there was at its center a life-preserving virtue, evidently showing that it is all enveloped in deadly venom, destroying rather than invigorating? But as God constituted the fiery Cherub with the flaming sword to guard the tree of life, so Nature established this watchful and fire-throwing dragon to prevent the entrance to the garden where she planted the precious tree bearing the golden apples, that is to say the knowledge of the most occult secrets of its treasure: which the learned ancients did not want to write at all, but only to teach by mouth to those whom they knew were worthy of it. Which was the cause that these great and admirable sciences vanished and over time were considered by the ignorant to be counterfeited at will.

What Esdas foreseeing would happen in the future through banishments, killings, flights and captivities of the Israelite people, and fearing that such mysteries would perish because without the benefit of writing the memory of men could not be greatly lasting, he assembled all the wise men who remained to the number of seventy, who reduced these things with him into as many books, as is testified when he said after forty days the Lord spoke, saying the things which you first wrote and offer them publicly so that all read: but the last seventy books you will keep in order to give them to the wise of your people, because in them is contained the sight, the intelligence and the source: And I did it thus.

Pic de la Mirandolle, considered a miracle in doctrine in his time, speaks of these books with great reverence: and here are his words. These (he says) are the seventy books of the Kabbalah, in which Esdra rightly said loudly that lie the sight, the intelligence and the source, that is to say the inestimable Theology of the supreme divinity , the fountain of wisdom the entire metaphysics of intelligence: the river of science, that is to say the very firm Philosophy of natural things. These books having been hidden for a long time were by Xistel Pontise fourth of the name started to translate into Latin language for the usefulness of our religion, but this good work was interrupted by his death. However, they are held in such esteem and reverence among the Hebrews that it is not lawful for anyone to touch them unless he is over forty years old. And it is an admirable thing that there are in this cabalistic doctrine with the decrees some points of Christianity. All this is taken word for word from the writings of this renowned Comte de la Mirandolle.

Now having, in my opinion, forgotten nothing of what was necessary for the purpose that I proposed to interpret according to my sense the content of the table of Hermes, which is an obscure Philosophical Cabal, I will withdraw from this Ocean of wonders, to wipe myself away in the rays of the Sun of your favors: saying goodbye to your Highness, & proving by legitimate reasons, that true Philosophy is the happiness, the honor, & the glory of everyone.

---

Third Book.

Some magnificent & ingenious Prince wanting to build a sumptuous Palace, will command the Architects that having ordered the base of the main members & designated their enrichment, they create in a more secure & convenient place a cabinet where he can withdraw & keep his most precious treasures securities. So that, in addition to the pleasure he can take in this, he can at the right time draw from it himself what he wants to give; without the effects of his liberality depending on others than him. For it often happens to many great people that they are unworthily forced to beg from their servants (even at the chance of an impudent refusal) a gift of little value for which they wish to recognize the merits of some virtuous man.

This prince is the rich & abundant Nature, who through divine meditation has built this great palace of the world in the middle of which she has placed the globe of the earth to serve as her cabinet, & assemble there what she has most precious by the contributions it requires from all the other members & Provinces of the universe. Constantly drawing from this inexhaustible treasure the maintenance of its building, and the sustenance of all its creatures. Which for this reason she lodged in here, in order to be like children always close to their mother's breast. For everything that lives in the world dwells in this earth, feeling by a natural instinct that in it sits the storehouse and source of life. This is why sensitive bodies talk and go around in search of their food, which as a benign mother it gives and supplies to the insensitive, subsisting and increasing each other through the benefit of vegetation. So that those who are attached to her by the roots, like the child in the mother's womb by the navel, receive and draw from her without labor their food and drink.

That is to say their life, which they miss as soon as they are separated and cut off: As we see daily from the uprooted trees and cut branches. But others who are not linked to it by attachment, pursue and seek only in it this life which they know to be hidden there: Some by the sole teaching of Nature: Others by the warning of experience combined with that of Nature again. In which certainly all these creatures make it clear that the earth is a very rich and perpetual treasure of life and that they would willingly return to its bowels to be more abundant participants in it. This gave subject to man (to whom, as more excellent in spirit, was granted from Heaven to be able to research and discover things through reasons) to enter into the curiosity of the prolongation of life, which he judged to have to be drawn & exhausted from this earth which originates from everything, nourishing, supporting & preserving everything: & which never diminishes or lacks in its powerful fecundity, because its center is always supplied & full of this invigorating spirit therefore not estimating nothing so precious and dear as the treasure of life, for which alone he ventures to all perils, and submits to all labors, and often in vain he wanted to surpass all other animals in this curious search, so that as he is created from A very perfect God in the respect of all other earthly creatures, he rose with a bolder flight to the knowledge of things.

For even though the brutes have in common with us this way of reason, which is according to the vital soul, which the Greeks call reason hidden within, and some have more of it than others; if they are not capable of the arts, except for a few, as Galen said, to whom however dexterity comes rather by nature than by institution, which can only fall in man, who alone must be said to be capable of learning them, and teaching others, contemplating by the eye of a deep & more than human cogitation of things hidden in the earth, under the waters, even above the Heavens, & of its own industry acquiring the most perfect of all goods, is philosophy: because Heaven and Nature have, as it were, contributed their best to each other's boredom for its perfection. I therefore consider it out of place to report here some verses, where I depicted this excellence in a certain dialogue, in which I make Thimon & Philo discuss the felicity or infelicity of man.

Philo.

Removing from the process the two best titles,
You produce the inventory and the extract of the misfortunes,
And to make the cause obscure and half-hearted,
You depict the whole man in his smallest part:
Part where nevertheless shines among the humanity
I don't know what great thing that smells of its deity.
But consider man in his most worthy form,
Form from which sparkles a signal light
Which other animal forces to fear him;
To receive the laws & let it be tamed.
See this noble intellect, this lively spirit which flies
From the East to the West, from one Pole to the other
In the instant of a moment, on the wing of thinking
That Mercury or Iris cannot outstrip.
Eagle who with a fixed eye in their splendor looks at
the yellowing Sun & the pale Moon,
Who has known their traces, & distinguished the turns
That one & the other completes by perfecting its course,
Which clarifies the shadow & the nocturnal veils
Saw the last stars from the highest Heavens:
And brought back to us the occult reasons
Why their various courses go changing the seasons,
How these divine eyes cry their influences,
To animate the bodies of celestial essences.
How from the most subtle of these pearly tears
is made the exquisite enamel of spring flowers,
From the least subtle the leaf, & from the largest the bark:
Which despite the seasons maintains the tree in its strength:
How does the Spirit of the world adamic & general
Produces a triple gender, and in all is equal:
As in its purity the gems it procreates,
And the Gold in the guts of the earth it creates,
Then how this spirit of all bodies is extracted
To oppose it to the strokes of homicide trait.
This intellect was the eye of which it is said that Lincaeus
Had the transparent thickness of the great rocks,
Saw Pluto in his throne & knew what
The Nymphs do under the azure of the deep Ocean:
How the rich pearl is produced, & increases
In the polished marble of its shiny layer.
And how the coral would be taken from the rocks
As well as a soft grass attached to the rocks.
Who made people travel by sea as well as by land,
Defend and increase their country by war,
Build cities and fortify them,
Wait for an enemy, or go and challenge him.
Who from the great body of the world made the anatomy,
Imitated from the high Heavens the Angelic harmony
And who reduced everything to the equitable laws
Of the compass, the rule, & the number, & the weight.

This is why God created him with his face and eyesight raised towards Heaven, not inclined and bending towards the Earth, like other animals devoid of reason, who only care for food. So that nothing is missing from his perfection than a longer life, and less crossed by troubles and illnesses, to be able to attain the complete knowledge of things and to highlight this inestimable jewel of intelligence with which he alone is gratified by a special privilege.

This imagination gives rise to the audacity of Paracelsus to murmur against Nature, accusing it of inconsideration in that it has given to some irrational and useless animals the usufruct of a very long and healthy life, however much this grace may be to them. indifferent, and that it denied men this much desired and necessary good since it was the only way to make them accomplished in the rarest sciences. Man therefore generously resolved to acquire for himself by art what Nature had refused him, so that deploying the forces of this intellect he undertook to climb the ladder of Philosophy to the highest level of natural secrets, to namely the restoration & extension of life, beyond the common limits of their species. For in this lies the end & principal goal of all Philosophers, who will surely never find anything greater among the spacious forest of the investigation of the mysteries of the world: of which without doubt this Philosophy is the happiness, the honor & the glory.

For in the whole universe there are only three kinds of goods: namely those which we attribute to fortune, such as riches, greatness, and dignities. Those that we give to the happiness of the body, such as youth, health, strength, & disposition. And those which belong to the spirit, which are the sciences. As for the first two, they are uncertain & perishable, & cannot of themselves preserve or ensure the most necessary part of man, which is life: especially since both are subject to mutation & decadence . But the third being acquired by more solid means can not only give the other two, but also equip them against the accidents of fate and mortal corruption, with the assurance and preservation which they lack. However, I understand what in fact is truly science, such as the perfect knowledge of the works & secrets of Natures: to ascend to which, all others are only simple steps.

This is why excellent men have taken very little account of the first of these three goods, which they have neglected, even abhorred, in order to go about more freely in the pursuit and acquisition of the other two. But much more ardently to that of the third party, as the one on whom the secure and free possession of the preceding ones absolutely depends. For as in all creatures there is nothing more exquisite nor desirable than life, which gives feeling, vegetation, & consistency to everything, so there is nothing more rich & precious than what can maintain & preserve it beyond common use. Now it is quite apparent that life is a celestial and divine thing, that which can sustain it must therefore be of the same nature, because all things are maintained by that very thing from which they come. But I would rather say that this preserver of life is life itself. Because the extent & extension of it is done by addition & refilling, in order to avoid the void or failure in it.

The meats we eat serve us only for this purpose, because they participate in the life of the universe; & contain in them some particle, which the cook of Nature draws & expresses to join it to ours. But because the little they have is too enveloped in excremental corruption, and is not perfectly fixed to resist the assaults of destruction, which is this unnatural fire, which constantly acts to try to banish it from us with the radical humidity, & removing it from its home, it would be impossible for man to acquire this length of life through meats alone. By which it is necessary to draw it from purer bodies, and further develop it from everything which could infect it and prevent it from producing in us the effect for which Heaven intended it, which is to increase and vivify the OUR. But rather it is very necessary to enter the body of the world, and take there this general life which never fails; but carries in itself its multiplication & dilation, in order to produce it later in us, as much as the forces of our natural composition can carry it: because we must not consider that by this we can become immortal, since everything which carries body mass in itself, i.e. excrement & corruption, cannot be perpetuated. And we would have to be stripped of all body before we could achieve this title: because after this stripping our life remaining free, truly resembles the universal life of the great world, to which being reunited it rejoices in it as in its own nature, following the rule that everything returns to the place from which it started.

What Theophrastus wanted to understand by the soul of those who will live in the fifth, that is to say, who will be freed from the mass composed of the four elements, and will live in a fifth more perfect than the four: secret than the only embalmed intelligence of the essential smell of Philosophy is capable of understanding. For this fifth element is not a thing located above earth, water, air, and fire, as having the separation of Chaos mounted higher than them because of a greater lightness: But it is properly a simple Spirit of itself, which mingles indifferently everywhere, which nourishes & animates everything, & gives essence to all things: nevertheless being at its center (that is to say in its own nature) free from all corporeality, which is the true domicile of death.

Because since consistency comes to it from bodies, it is necessary that before this consistency & specification it be very simple & purely spiritual, not mixed up nor confused in the confusion of the assembled elements, & consequently not subject to corruption & mortification: which mortification to the body is not, however, the annihilation of this Spirit, but only the separation & banishment of it: because, feeling the corrupting sulfur which controls the whole body, taking possession of it & occupying it entirely, it is forced to abandon the place, and return from whence he came, namely to the center of this great sphere of life, leaving the bodily and excremental masses on the earth from which they were taken. Now, especially since this great world and its life consist of a spherical form, which is indeficient roundness, the ancient sages took the argument to consider it eternal; & that all the lines & the circumference of the globe proceed from the center as from a source: For they are both made of individual points, the long or round extent of which cannot even be imagined without a center.

It is very reasonable to believe that the center of universal life is the seat of the greatest of all the treasures of the world, of which the earth is the true central point. Also the center of life is in this land, which was chosen by this universal mother of the family as a cabinet and storehouse of her riches, which she amasses and assembles there to draw them out and use them for the maintenance of her life. its admirable building, & substance of its children & servants. He therefore who will have Heaven so propitious that he can once enter this rich and sumptuous cabinet, of which Philosophy alone carries the key, will he not have reason to say that he has ascended to Heaven like these two chosen ones? of God Enoch & Helia: & descended to hell like these three heroes Orpheus, Hercules, & Theseus?

But these singular favors are only granted to the children of the Gods, who under the paternal blessing were able to obtain their opening by the helping hand of this Queen of the Arts, the profound Philosophy, which we can rightly call luck, the honor & glory of the world, since it exalts man above man himself, from a distance as far as that which separates Heaven from Earth: And enriches, honors, & decorates its lovers above the human excellence of all others, as much or more than Croesus surpassed in opulence poor Irus of Homer, that the noon of the most beautiful summer day passes into luminous ardor the darkest and cold winter night, or that the brilliant and pure gold overcomes in luster, value, and virtue the vile filth of iron. O great, O venerable, divine Philosophy! how happy is the mortal who you give the grace to deign to receive his wishes, to grant his prayers and to fill his soul with the incomparable happiness that the perfect knowledge of the most hidden things brings: to which the soul could never arrive. human understanding, without being carried there on your tireless wings. For could we imagine for the happiness of man some good equal to the two that you extend to his favorites making them assured of a healthy and long life, and of an inexhaustible abundance of treasures, which nothing can take away from them or only diminish, as soon as you have once made them possessors of this supreme & miraculous medicine. Of which Nature even in her lament speaks thus:

Who cures all illness,
And whoever has it never begs:
Whoever has an ounce & a single grain

Always is rich & always healthy: In the end the creature of God & Nature dies content. Without which blessings life is not life at all, but an odious languor, comparable to some tumultuous sea which several winds contrary to, blowing reverse waves upon waves, ultimately swallowing up our poor tormented ship in the depths of the dark abysses of death. Because from birth we have as our internal enemies the squadron of diseases whose number is almost infinite: then from the outside the cursed battalion of inconveniences that inhuman poverty causes. And these two adversaries come to conspire against life and practice their secret intelligence, to judge a little what defense could preserve it from their assaults. Besides which further harm the disdain and mutations of fortune, against which the human Spirit (covered with the inexpugnable and invincible weapons of august Sapience) virilely opposes itself: With what praises could we know how to worthily decorate the one who gave us first revealed the principles & precepts of Philosophy? But rather how was the human Spirit able to penetrate so vividly to the heart of the World & Nature through the search for such wonders? The one who was certainly the first to be looked upon by such a good Star that he was able to understand and practice these high and occult mysteries through an experience full of reasons, Was a child of a God, or some God himself.

On this occasion, true antiquity wanted to persuade us that Apollo was the inventor and superintendent of medicine. Which he shared with his son. Aesculapius, as a very precious thing, with a very strict prohibition against divulging its secret on pain of being punished as sacrilege and impious. Finally, whoever tastes, embraces, and possesses this divine fruit of Philosophy is as if seated at the top of an inaccessible mountain, from where he sees others busy with base and childish things. So much so that it pleases the eyes of his noble intellect, spreading their gaze over the conceptions of the most renowned among the vulgar. Because popular and common sciences give rise to the earth, and simply crawl around the insipid crust and vain surface of things.

But the true Philosophy, which is properly the same Gymnosophy of the Indians, Magics of the Egyptians, and cabal of the Jews, penetrates to the heart of the marrow, and leaves no particle of the composition of bodies that it does not examine perfectly. That if we weigh it against scholasticism, we will find more inequality in weight than between pumice and lead: because she walks through the darkness of doubt, groping with the stick of conjecture alone. Who made the most expert wander and leave the true and plain path of Nature, lost them in the twists and turns of this labyrinth, devoid of the net of our Ariadne. This has deprived ordinary medicine of operating powerfully like spagirics against fixed and rebellious diseases, not because its possessors are not highly learned, but because its foundation is not seated at the center of things, but only in the surface area. As for example, when they use the decoction of dry oat roots to relieve those afflicted with calculus, (for which they are truly very suitable, as I saw the learned Pena practice) & do not take it into their head to extract from this simple thing what causes such an effect. Which drawn & prepared artistically, taken in small quantity, would give perfect healing instead of simple relief.

Especially since without amusing ourselves with the vulgar axiom which wants that the opposite cures the opposite, the stone where Calculus being hardened in the bodies by Salt is the only coagulator, it must be cured by the salt of the individuals that the Heaven has been gifted with a truly effective and particular faculty against this evil. Then the opposite will truly be cured, even though salt has been applied against an evil coming from Salt, which are two similar, but their effects are different, because the oil of Salt had hardened, so that one forces the other to give in to him. No longer, no less, is it experienced by those who, having burned their fingers, approach them and hold them as close to the fire as they can endure, so that the greatest heat dissipates the least, the pain subsides. Everything that the laziness of vulgar Physicists objects against these remedies which are new to them, and therefore very pernicious to take from within. Which I would easily concede to them if they were taken alone & in excessive quantities. But those who know how to take and give laugh at such speeches.

Sonnet on the conclusion of this book.

Who therefore seeks honor, glory, and the happiness of the world,
Be a Philosopher, an artist, and he will rejoice,
For Philosophy will finally lead him
To the summit of the treasures with which Nature abounds.
From him the night of error where in vain is founded
The blind opinion it will dissipate,
And of the truth the day will clarify
pulling it out of the bosom of the round machine.
When Jason had conquered this much desired good,
Which through experience made him assured
of living richer and healthier than he had dared to believe:
Disdaining poverty, and braving death,
Equal to the demigods did he not possess not
Of the universal world, honor, & glory?

END.

Description of the universal Spirit of the World.
He is a Spirit-body, first born of Nature,
Very common, very hidden, very vile, very precious:
Preserving, destroying, good & malicious:
Beginning & end of all creature.
Triple in substance it is, of salt, of oil, & of pure water,
Which coagulates, gathers, & waters, the low places
All by its unctuous, & moist, of the high Heavens
Skilled to receive all form & figure.
The only Art, by Nature, in our eyes makes it visible,
It conceals at its center an infinite power,
Garnished with the faculties of Heaven & Earth.
He is a Hermaphrodite, and gives growth
to everything in which he mixes indifferently,
for the reason that in himself he encloses all germs.
That the World is full of Spirit by which all things live.
This great body, of the great God, the first creature,
Was filled with a Spirit from the beginning,
Omniform in seed, & lively in movement,
Whose animates everything, & brings everything to light.
Of the earth and of the Heavens it is the nourishing soul,
And of all that lives in them likewise.
On earth it is vapor, in Heaven properly fire,
Triple in one substance & first matter.
For from three, and in three, by Nature comes,
And returns every body, whose balm it contains,
Having for progenitors the Sun & the Moon.
Through the air it germinates below, and seeks upwards:
The earth nourishes it in its warm belly:
And of perfections it is the common cause.

Commentary or exhibition of the table of Hermes Trismegistus. Dealing with the general Spirit of the world.

The text of which table is contained in the Sonnet below.

It is an assured point full of admiration,
That the top and the bottom are only the same thing:

Wonderful effects by adaptation.
A single one has mediated everything,
And for parents, womb, & nurse, we place
Phoebus, Diana, the air & the earth, where rests
This thing in which lies all perfection.
If we put it in the ground it has its full force:
Separating by great art, but easy way,
The subtle from the thick, & the earth from the fire.
From the earth rises to Heaven, and then to earth,
From Heaven it descends, Little by little receiving
the virtues of both that it encloses in its belly.

END