The true laboratory of alchemy,
from the Theatrum Chemicum britannicum ,

1652.

Treatise on the Salt of the Philosophers

by
Brother Francesco Maria Pompey Colonna

Welcome, sir, you couldn't take your time better, I'm not busy, we can talk to each other at our ease, but you seem very heated to me, where do you come from.

Timagene

I come from Protogene's, where I met the Abbé Cantate, whom you know for a very dissipated man: as soon as he saw me, he got up under the apparent pretext of propriety, but with the effective intention of insulting me: here's how.

He threw himself on our friend's Books, and began to examine them one after the other, as if he wanted to make an inventory of them, the Cosmopolitan having unfortunately fallen under his thumb, he affected to attach himself more to it than to the others, then stopping suddenly, he addressed himself to me, because he knows that I love the science of which this book treats very well, saying to me with a mocking air, here is one of those Philosophers es who deserve the fire, for having ruined many people in search of this imaginary philosopher's stone, I know only too well what it cost my father to have given in this chimera, shouldn't we banish such books from a well-policed ​​state?

I told him that they had ruined only madmen, and that thus the evil was not very great, and that an Edict of suppression should not be taken in their favor, which would deprive a number of honest people of it, who make this reading their whole occupation.

That these Books are like these knives which hurt only those who do not know how to use them. Why, Mr. Chemist, he answered me sourly, have we not shown the use of it, do your Philosophers believe that we should be content with chaos, riddles, and other nonsense with which their Books are filled? I replied in a tone contrary to his, because they want there to always be ignorant people. I immediately took my leave of the Company, for I was beginning to get terribly excited; you know that there was never a great sympathy between this abbé and me.

Aristipus

You did very well to leave the game, and not to enter into matters with him, our Philosophy is a science which one must not profane in any way, and it is profane to speak about it with people who are unworthy of it. Our Abbot is one of those people who only believe possible what can enter into their hardened brains; it is enough for him that his father and many others are ruined to breath, to believe the imaginary Philosopher's Stone, as if the ignorance of such people, was capable of counterbalancing a truth recognized for more than twenty-five centuries, by irreproachable men.

If we were more curious to acquire science than wealth, there would not be so many prompters, and we would make more progress in our Art. But as gold and silver are the sole object of most men, they attach themselves only to processes which promise them the most, and which present them with easy means of possessing mountains of these precious metals, without considering the possibility of nature. The little appearance that those who are the Authors, would have wanted to teach everyone, the means to get rich, without regard to the disorders that their imprudence could cause in the civil society. We give blindly to these false appearances, and we fill our minds with ridiculous and reprehensible sophistications.

They are taxed with madness and vision, and condemned to fire, As our Abbot does, just as if they had been the cause of the ruin of these imprudent ones.

There is still another kind of people, who without having made any expense, condemn the stone on the label of the bag, because they will have heard of it only with contempt and indignation: it is enough for them that one is applied to research to pass in their minds for madmen; but we must console ourselves for this, and remain in agreement with the axiom which says:
"say no habet oforem ni i ignorantem."

Timagene

Tell me, please, how to behave with those who ask you for proofs of the possibility of the Stone.

Aristipus

It is necessary to distinguish these people there, because they are of two kinds; there are docile ones, and rebellious ones, the latter are usually arrogant, presumptuous and stubborn; they only interrogate you to spite you, and they never accept your reasons, however convincing they may be; one must abbreviate with them, and remember that one must never discuss a system against those who deny its principles; with regard to others, they must be satisfied by probable and natural reasons.

Timagene

What do you mean by natural reasons.

Aristipus

Natural reasons are those which are drawn from nature, by comparison from one kingdom to another, although one should not always make use of these comparisons, because of the great difference that there is between these kingdoms, principally between the mineral and the two others; it is necessary for that to have recourse to the proofs that the Philosophers expose to us, which are the most convincing.

Timagene

What is the strongest reason that can be offered against the possibility of the Stone? For my part, I do not think that it can be easily destroyed, since M. le Vaier, after having fought it with all his might in his instruction to Monseigneur the Dauphin, ingenuously admits that there are no physical reasons which obviously show the impossibility of making gold artificially. I do not believe that anyone is able to contradict an Author of this reputation.

Aristipus

We are constantly objected that Art cannot imitate nature in the manufacture and generation of gold. Which would be in the bowels of the earth, beyond the reach of man, who must therefore be unaware of it, and the origin, and the nature of the seed, and that he cannot change one species into another, which belongs only to God who created everything with a single word.

To which we reply, that although the generation of Gold is not very obvious, that does not prevent it from being as well known as that of the other mixed species. We do not claim to change one species into another by our Art alone, but we join Art to nature (because our Stone is more natural than artificial), we help it to separate the obstacles which are opposed to the perfection of its Works. What she could very well do without us if she had hands. We take the male and female seeds well purified, put them in a clean place for their coction, we surpass nature by a degree, perfecting with a more than perfect perfection. Just as by inserting the seeds of plants in a well-prepared soil, we gather much more beautiful fruits,


Timagene

It might still be objected to you, that supposing the seed of Gold were known, it could not be changed from its proper and natural place, to be placed in an artificial place, without being altered, and without interrupting the course of nature. Just as it would be useless to take the seed of an animal, to put it in a foreign womb, it would produce nothing, because this operation depends on nature alone. Moreover, this auric seed would require for its coction, a heat which it seems impossible for the Art to communicate to it in a suitable degree; because who has found himself in the natural cooking of gold, to know exactly the heat which is specific to it.

Aristipus

Your objection contains one of those improper comparisons of which I spoke at the beginning of this discourse; because the seed of gold bears no resemblance, at least in form, to that of animals; the latter is liquid, to say nothing more, and that of gold is not. I do not claim that it is necessary to go into the mines to look for this seed there, since we have found it all in the very gold which contains it in all its parts, which Augurelle teaches us, when he says:

"in auro funt femina auri, quaravis absstructa vecedant longius."

We therefore take gold to separate its form, or to reduce it to its first matter, or to its seminal substance. In this reduction, matter begins the production of gold by desiring a new form, and suffering from being fixed by it; which would not do if the form were there: because it is necessary to know that in all generations, it is necessary to make this separation of form in order to produce contrariety there. The first opposites are the cause of all generations. Matter having its form obeys, for it has what it desires, and when form is separated from matter, and when it is free (this means the essential as much as possible, for as far as the accidental is concerned, it is not possible, nor even useful), the accidental is altered by corruption, and the separation of the essential form. But it is not separated otherwise, being without accident it would make invisible, it desires a new form, when it receives it, it lets itself be fixed a second time, and it begins a new generation. How art can aid and greatly advance nature by heat, as we see in flowers and other plants, which art produces by proportionate heat. It is therefore not absolutely necessary to know exactly the degree of heat which nature uses for cooking gold, which is however believed to be very gentle. and it starts a new generation. How art can aid and greatly advance nature by heat, as we see in flowers and other plants, which art produces by proportionate heat. It is therefore not absolutely necessary to know exactly the degree of heat which nature uses for cooking gold, which is however believed to be very gentle. and it starts a new generation. How art can aid and greatly advance nature by heat, as we see in flowers and other plants, which art produces by proportionate heat. It is therefore not absolutely necessary to know exactly the degree of heat which nature uses for cooking gold, which is however believed to be very gentle.

Timagene

Why do the Philosophers say, that matter should not be sought in vulgar metals, because they are dead, comparing them to baked bread which cannot serve as seed. Doesn't the Trevisan say to leave all metals purified, does it not seem that he wants to insinuate to us that the purified metals have lost their life by fire, that it is useless to seek there this animated seed which we need, because life is not found in the dead.


Aristipus

It is true that the passage of purified metals from Trevisan deceived many people for not having heard it, and to tell you what I think about it, it must be reported here.

Leave all metals purified, for how many of them know the entrance, and that our matter by all the sayings of the Philosophers must be composed of quicksilver, as it appears by Geber, &c. and by the Philosopher in 3° of the Metheora, where quite clearly and without any parable it is said, that the metals are nothing else than quicksilver congealed by way of decoction.

Yet are they not our stone, while they remain in metallic form; for it is impossible for a matter to have two forms. How then do you want them to be the stone which is a dignified, middle form, between metal and mercury, if this form is not first taken away and corrupted? Mark this well, that this form being therefore taken from them and corrupted, they must necessarily change their state, being revived, to produce a new generation. Otherwise the axiom of the Philosophers would be false, when they say that:
"the corruption of one thing causes the generation of another",

and what I said above would have no place; namely, that matter deprived of its form always wishes and desires a new form, and that having received it, it allows itself to be fixed a second time, and begins a new generation.

So you see well, that although the Philosophers tell us that the vulgar metals are like baked bread, that does not prevent them from being revivified to produce a new generation of their kind; they will then make living metals and risen from death to life.

Timagene

I recognize my mistake now, for I confess to you that I have always believed that it was necessary to search the earth to seek these living metals in their source, as it seems that several have done; this trouble is therefore useless, since the metals such as we have them can serve our purpose.

Aristipus

In truth, if we believed most of the Authors, to take them literally, we would be obliged to go digging in the mines to look for this second material; I say second, because the first is indeterminate.

Let us examine the state in which we would find it in its origin. It must first be established that the stars continually pour their seed, or their hot and dry spirit, into a humid matrix, and that this humidity retaining the astral seed, the metal is formed perfect or imperfect, according to the purity or impurity of the place, and the temperament of this matrix?

The dry spirit cannot coagulate on its own because of the dryness, it needs a specific material to make it take shape, which is water. As soon as this sulphurous spirit is mixed with water, it is no longer common water, it is the first principle, or outline of the metallic generation that the Philosophers call Mercury, or viscous water, which being received in a clean place, and maintained by a gentle heat, and central humidity, is finally converted into metal.

Will we take this viscous water for our matter? It would be useless, because then we would interrupt the course of nature, and we are warned to take a matter on which this same nature has ceased its action. Shall we take from these mines a declared metal, which seems more probable? We will have a material that will have to be calcined and melted, to separate the pure metal from its lead, and it will be found after many operations, that we will only have a metal similar to those that we commonly find, without taking so much useless trouble.

Timagene

Are we not told to take a raw metal, because its spirits are there in greater abundance, and they are not so strongly attached to it as to that which has undergone fusion.

Aristipus

I agree that the metals coming out of the mine are recommended to us, because their essential parts are not so strongly attached to the accidentals. But it would always be necessary to use the same means as it has been said there for their preparation.

As for the spirits that you claim to abound there, they are only an elementary, sulphurous, and superfluous water which is called mineral vinegar. This serves no purpose for the real composition of the mixture, which should always be separated by fire, as useless to our purpose.

It is not the same with the composition of metals as with that of plants and animals, which are consumed in a short time by fire, so that only ashes remain; and a little salt. The metals, on the contrary, are purified and perfected for the uses to which we ordinarily intend them, because their principles are so well bound together that they are almost inseparable. What we experience by the continuation of the fire, when they exhale or remain, according to their perfection or imperfection, their volatility or fixity. Which shows us that a metal is not so easily destroyed by fire as we imagine. But suppose they lose part of their essential principles, our secret fire,

Timagene

I ask you to explain to me what you mean by these terms of essential principles and accidental principles, I believe their knowledge very necessary to our art.

Aristipus

It is so necessary that if we do not hear them well, it is difficult to make any progress in it.

As this matter has only been sketched out by others, I will here give as extensive an explanation of it as may be desired.

And to begin with, I will say after Beker, who has spoken of it most clearly, that all the simple bodies of nature are composed of principles of substance which are double, some are essential, others are accidental.

The essentials are those without which the body cannot be a true mixture, nor a perfect body.

The accidentals are those which enter into the mixture, or to nourish, or to augment the body. I will disregard the two animal and vegetable kingdoms, to speak only of the mineral kingdom, because this Treatise would be too big against my intention, I will only speak of the two kingdoms in passing.

There are two essential principles, namely sulfur and salt, and two accidental principles, which are earth and phlegm. Let's talk about the accidental principles, then we'll talk about the essentials.

The earth is taken for the base, and the foundation of the matrix, and the water for the food. These two mingle in all compounds, and by art they are removed. From there all the bodies have terrestrialities, and superfluities, if one separates them from them, the only essential principles remain, it is what one calls gasoline. It should be known that for the present generation the accidental principles are necessary to give the seed a matrix, and a nourishment, and to be a medium for making union. by which the essential principles join and are incorporated with the accidental ones, from which they receive the increase and corporeity.

The essential principles of substance, which are sulfur and salt, are the principal parts of the mixtures, of which sulfur holds the first rank. The chymists have given him several names, sometimes they call him the King, the Male, the Lion, the Toad, the Fire of nature, the Sun of bodies, the Lut of Sapience, the Manure of the Philosophers, the red Mercury. Which names mark fixity and conglutination. The form, the fixity, the sperm, the soul, the color, and the cause of all adhesion are attributed to sulfur.

The other principle of substance is salt, by salt I do not mean the common salt, or the salt of the bodies, the salty, acid or bitter, or which stings and burns the tongue. This flavor comes from the sulfur by its mixture, which must be disregarded as from the form. When here I consider salt as matter, the common salts are themselves made of salt, and sulfur, of matter and form. In this state they should not be regarded as principles, but as mixed.

The Philosophers have called matter, salt, because separated from its form, it often appears in its accidental form as ice, or salt; either because salt easily dissolves into water, or because it is believed to be just frozen water.

One attributes to this matter the capacity to receive the form of sulphur, which is the reason why it is called matter, humid, radical, menstruation, potential body capable of all forms. Besides this, it is given several hieroglyphic names like the Queen, the Woman, the Eagle, the Serpent, the Celestial Water, the Key, the Mercury of the Philosophers, the Water of Life and Death, the Wax where the seal of Hermes is imprinted, the Ice Water, the Philosophical Rain, the Fountain, the Bath of the Bodies, the Very Sour Vinegar, the Soap, etc. Which names would take too long to explain.

Timagene

Why don't you say anything about mercury, isn't it a principle of substance which the Philosophers have always mentioned?

Aristipus

Mercury is a principle of quality, and not of substance, it is he who makes the union of salt and sulfur, of matter, and of form, as we see in the soap factory, where water serves as a link between salts and fats, to form a body.

Mercury is said to be the principle of quality, because it always carries with it the saline and sulphurous qualities of the principles of substance. It is by this union that one principle is never without the other, hence it is that some philosophers establish as principles only sulfur and mercury, others mercury, sulfur and salt. Because Basile Valentin says, there is one, there are two, there are three, which causes a strange confusion.

Timagene

This is clear after the explanation you have just given of it, I now understand that one only needs to trouble oneself with the salt principle, to possess the other two. Tell me, please, what is in common salt, which is believed to be the origin of all other salts?

Aristipus

Common salt is the one that should least be called a pure and separate principle, it contains three oleasters, and as many aquosities, as analysis shows. Even if it were a pure principle, it would not immediately be a metallic principle, and consequently it would be of no use to us.

Timagene

Tell me, please, where its origin comes from, it seems to me that those who wrote it do not agree among themselves, some claim that the sea is its source, others the earth, and others the stars.

Aristipus

It is not easy to reconcile these different feelings, when for me, I would incline willingly to what Basil Valentin says: namely, that salt has several matrices in the earth, like minerals, which continually attract astral influences which are embodied there.

For it is certain that the stars are the true source and the first origin of salt. If it wasn't, the mines would wither away every day and come to an end. The contrary is seen in those of Catalonia and other places, which are preserved almost in the same state, although much is removed. This washed salt, carried away by the waters, could not always last, if it were not continually repaired. It would serve no purpose to object that the quantity is too great to be entirely dissipated, for these lotions have been going on for a long time. It is true that there is a continual volatilization by the collision of the waves of the sea, and by the attraction of the sun, and that being spread in the air, and driven by the winds with the clouds, fall back on the lands, which makes them fertile in many places, having changed nature. This volatilized salt can even find matrices in which it accumulates, settles there, and forms new salt mines. Which are then carried by the waters into the sea, fountains, or lakes. In this way we must conceive that there has been a perpetual circulation of it since the creation of the world.

But we must not imagine, like some, that this salt falls back on the surface of the earth, in the same form, and in the same state, in which it was at the moment of its volatilization. It is far from it, because it must be known that this great fluid that the Philosophers call the sea of ​​the world, has as much capacity to spiritualize, and universalize things, as the earth has to specify them.

If we expose the dead head to the air, or the faeces of common salt after all the spirits have been drawn from it by distillation, after a certain time, we will find in these faeces other salt similar to the first. It is the same after the distillation of all the other such, whose dead head serves as a matrix to attract the same salt as that which it had lost by fire. Which would not happen if the air were not the universal store of the essence of beings, which is determined according to the nature of the matrix in which it spreads.

Timagene

You remind me of a memoir which recently fell into my hands on the subject of saltpetre; whoever is its author is certainly not of your feeling concerning the universality of beings. He pretends to prove that nitre derives its principal origin from plants and animals, that the air serves at most for its production only for the sole function of drying out superfluous humidity in order to make it appear.

To prove his system, he reports some experiments, among others, that a nitrous stone exposed to the open air had been denitrated, instead of acquiring new saltpeter, and that the salt of tartar long exposed to the air as an alkali, had suffered no change by aerial acid. He concludes after a long reasoning, that there is no saltpeter to hope for, except that of plants and animals. You judge well that this opinion is of very dangerous consequence, for the universality, and the specification of the beings which you support.

Aristipus

I would not undertake to answer this paradox if I did not find myself among the number of things which subsist only by the nourishment which they receive from the beneficent spirit of the air. Because :

"Non folo pane vivit homo, sed cibo nectareo cœlesti lamine impregnato."

What is said of man must relate to all created things, which are maintained only by this celestial meat, each according to its nature. What then is this meat, if not this invisible essence which is specified according to the materials which receive it?

But if I have to explain myself by the terms acid and alkali, aren't these matters alkaline with respect to the acid of the air? It will be admitted to me that there are several kinds of alkali as there are several kinds of acids, as has been said elsewhere, of which some are weak, others strong, and others very strong. Nature, whose action is very gentle, probably uses only the former for the construction of compounds. But these acids, although weak, being the cause of their production, are still so of their corruption, which causes them to perish after a certain time. As much because this acid which is in them a leaven of corruption, never ceasing to act, takes the upper hand in the end,

Also we see that the things which we want to preserve must be preserved from the air by carefully enclosing them or stopping their pores with sulphurous spirits, fats, or salts.

It is certain that corruption exercises its empire with much more force over animals and vegetables, when they are deprived of their vegetative or sensitive life, than over mineral things. As they have received their being from the nitre of the air, they can easily be changed into saltpeter if they are not exposed to the open air for a long time. In this case, the nitre of these mixtures, aspiring only to return to the place of its birth, would disperse entirely, as it happened to the nitrous stone exposed to the open air, in the same way that the strong carry away the weak, the soap the oil, that salt water desalinates the fish better than does that which is not.

By the same principle, the salt of tartar, which is placed among the violent alkalis by the action of fire, having received its being from the same aerial nitre, must be changed into nitre, like other vegetable substances. When we will want to recognize the truth without concern, we will be fully convinced of it, when this fixed, unctuous salt, will be disunited by means of a suitable quantity of well desalinated earth, and exposed in a temperate place.

Who can be ignorant of the changes of alkali into acid, which take place continually by the sole action of the air? The ashes that are thrown on the earth in certain places, do they not fatten it with their salt? The grasses which this earth produces, do they not mark by their elongated forms the figure, and the character of the nitre to which this salt had been changed, to insinuate themselves into their fibres?

And are not calcined stones alkalis which easily take on the nature of acids? Even the salt of tartar, of which I have spoken, if it were not for its bony consistency, would soon change into saltpetre. Since we see after a certain time, that although this salt is clogged when we want to keep it, it takes its shape, and the needles in the upper part of the vessel, or in the lower one, if its consistency is liquid. I could allege other examples of this truth, if it were necessary, I will content myself to end this discourse with reporting an experience which I have had, which must confirm to us incontestably that the air is filled with spiritual and seminal beings of the three kingdoms.

In the month of March of the year 1697, I had exposed a large brand new wooden slat on the wall of a courtyard nine or ten feet high, to the rain and the sun. I left it like this for two years. This time expired, I saw that a silt a good inch thick had collected there. A few days later this land produced weeds without any visible seed, and three small snails with shells the size of a pea. I have no doubt that I would have found more there if I had used a microscope, since two months later, it was at the beginning of May 1699, I found seven there, which were as big as filberts. I pulled up these weeds which had grown in proportion, and I washed the earth in water. Which left me with several small, grayish, smooth stones, the size of millet. This experience served to confirm to me that visible things are produced and maintained by invisible ones; and that if the mixtures were not animated by the spirit of the air, there would be no generation.

Timagene

Although this experience is probable, it could however be objected to you that this abbreviated generation of the three kingdoms would be the effect of terrestrial vapors, which having collected in your vessel could have caused this production. But it seems more judicious to attribute the spiritual seeds to the great fluid of the air, than to the earth which is itself animated by it. For it is certain that the lower elements derive their perfection from the higher ones by the concordance and the relationship which the Creator has established between them.

It must be admitted that I would have had great pleasure in considering your little land with its mixtures, and that this experience is capable of causing many reflections.

Please tell me how vitriols and alums are produced in the earth.

Aristipus

The vitriols, the alums, and the other salts which are found in the earth, are formed of an acid water of the nature of rock salt, which has taken on different qualities according to the impression it has received from the lands which it has encountered in its passage; what proves this opinion is that all the salts being well purified, represent to us the cubic figure of common salt, without excepting saltpeter in its most fixed part.

Timagene

Since the vitriols take on different qualities according to the meeting and the dissolution of the mineral earths, shouldn't we find solar and lunar vitriols, why do we only have those that come from Mars and Venus.

Aristipus

It is that Mars and Venus are more easily dissolved than the Sun and the Moon, because of the abundance of the earth which enters into their composition. Which makes them willingly yield to a solvent as weak as that which is found in the earth: the facility which these two metals have in changing into rust, is the convincing proof of this.

Although only two kinds of vitriol issue from the bowels of the earth, this does not prevent all metals from being reduced to vitriol, since they derive their origin, as has been said, from sulphurous water. If that were not so, ordinary chemistry could not change them into vitriols which are called artificial, and spagyria itself would be very embarrassed in making these natural vitriols.

Timagene

I would like you to tell me what natural vitriol really is.

Aristipus

To tell you what natural vitriol is, with all its circumstances, would take too long a discussion, and one could only repeat what others have said of it in more than a thousand different ways. It will suffice to tell you simply that a natural vitriol is the substance, essence, and seed of metals in general, and in particular. He is a being who derives his origin directly from the stars. A compound of the three principles, arising from the natural destruction of bodies, and a subject which has been and always will be the subject of true Philosophers.

Timagene

Why do you call this compound salt or vitriol, why don't you call it another name.

Aristipus

It is that the name of salt suits it because of the resemblance it has with other salt because things take their name from their substance and their appearance. For example, when our subject has taken the form of a fixed white earth, we call it white sulphur; when he took that of a spirit, we call him mercury; and when it takes other forms, it takes still other names. I will say nothing about it for the present, it is enough to have mentioned those of the three principles.

Timagene

I would like to know if one can separate these three principles really and distinctly, and what is to be understood by the separation of the elements recommended by the Philosophers.

Aristipus

The separation that art can make of them presents us with only two, which are mercury and sulphur, both of which contain salt. This is why the Ancients made no mention of the latter, having spoken only of the two others which cannot exist without salt, which causes the dissolution of sulfur by means of mercury, so as to make together only one body.

The separation of the elements is the same as that of our principles. Our sulfur is the earth which contains the fire in potency, and our mercury is the water which contains the air. Which principles and elements being well united together, and having acquired the dominant qualities of mercury, are made the double mercury, by the indissoluble marriage of Heaven with earth, of brother with sister. What could not be, without this central salt which appears here only by its power and its current qualities.

Far from it that these principles can really be distinguished, there being only ever two that appear, each of the two participating in the third. Likewise, each one in particular always retains the character of the other two. For mercury is from sulfur and salt, sulfur from mercury and salt, and salt from mercury and sulfur. Which makes them all synonymous like the elements.

It is by these indelible qualities that this triple subject has always been the admiration of the greatest philosophers who have regarded it as the principal agent of nature, because without it there would be no generation or increase in the mixtures. Without him these same mixed ones would not preserve the time which is assigned to them, without him they could not be regenerated, and would remain eternally in the corruption of their nature, and without him no perfection nor amendment in their infirmities.

O marvelous and worthy object of the Sages! What thanks should we give to God for allowing us to know you, and to be able to contemplate your admirable effects in all that comes before our sight. Not only do you give being to the things of this lower world, it is you who vivifies, preserves and perfects them according to the order you have received from the Creator. If sensible and insensible things owe you so many benefits, what gratitude does the man in whose favor you exercise them owe you? Happy a thousand times happy the one who possesses you free from the envelopes that hide you from the eyes of everyone. He enjoys an inestimable treasure, since the most precious things that men took so much for their value, cannot be compared to you.

Timagene

I am very convinced that the one who is the owner of this treasure, has nothing more to desire in this world, since he knows what is most hidden. In nature, and that by means of it he can procure health and the other necessities of life, without which man cannot be happy. Tell me, please, if salt is found in all things.

Aristipus

You must not doubt that he is in all things of this sublunary world. In creation God drew salt out of chaos to serve as the basis and foundation for the other two principles, for the production and preservation of the mixtures. Without the salt, the form would lack substance, and the mercury would attach itself to nothing.

Vegetables would lack solidity and flavor for the use and food of animals. These same animals would be without vigor and without strength, the metals would not be malleable. Finally, without salt everything would fall into corruption, or rather nature would be annihilated.

The learned Sendivogius establishes three kinds of salts, the first of which, he says, is a central salt which the spirit of the world engenders without any discontinuity in the center of the elements by the influences of the stars.

The second is a spermatic salt which is the home of the invisible seed of all things, and the third is the last matter of those things which remains after their destruction.

The first is the base and outline of the Principles of Beings, which together with the sulfur and mercury of its kind, are together the source and origin of the natural Principles.

The second is he who is the father of generation and increase, it is by him that the mixtures are multiplied according to their kind, it is also by him that they are preserved. It is possible to believe that this salt is more volatile than fixed in nature. It is to this salt that we are indebted for our being and it is this salt that is the object of all our research for the perfection of the three kingdoms of nature.

The third, finally, is a coarse salt of the nature of nitre, or vitriol, according to the manner in which the mixtures have been destroyed. If plants and animals waste away naturally, their Salt will be nitrous; if it is by the violence of the fire, it will be fixed and sulphurous.

Minerals produce vitriol however they end. These three Salts not being altered are only one which we call essential Salt.

Timagene

Can we draw this essential Salt from all the kingdoms.

Aristipus

It can be obtained from vegetables and minerals in a coagulated form almost like saltpetre, and not from animals, because of the volatility and penetration of their substance. (Saltpeter can be extracted from it, but this Salt is not their essential Salt). That of plants is easily obtained by grinding, and the expression of their juice. That of metals and minerals is difficult to see. It is necessary for that to be enlightened by the beautiful Philosophy, and to make use of a means impenetrable to those who do not know it.

Timagene

I would like you to tell me the qualities that this metallic essential salt possesses, I have no doubt that it is endowed with many virtues for human medicine, and even for that of metals.

You may well imagine that he is able to make some impression upon the subjects of his reign, and that like a pure substance he must unite in homogeneity with that of the perfect and imperfect metals, his mercury uniting with their mercury, his sulfur with their sulphur, and his salt with their salt, as the Doctrine of the Ancients says.

But my intention is not to treat here of this matter, reserving me to speak about it in another place.

As far as Medicine is concerned, if five or six grains of it be taken with broth, white wine, water, tea infusions, and vulneraries, or other vehicles, its ordinary effects are to remove all the obstructions of the viscera, which are the source of many diseases, because they prevent the free circulation of the blood, and, as a necessary consequence, its purgation, which causes infallible disorder in our bodies.

Which makes itself known by fevers, deciduous disease, crysipelas, paralysis, swelling, and hardness of the liver and spleen, cachexia, weakness of the stomach, colic, inflammation of the lungs, galls, scratches, scabs, and many other discomforts, not omitting dropsies, jaundice, pale colors, and retentions of months, and urine, diseases which arise, like the preceding , obstructions, and impurity of the blood mass.

This Salt, by evacuating the thick and viscous humors, and driving them out through the urine, is a specific admirable, because its principal virtue is to attack all the obstructions, and having opened them, to unload nature little by little from the insult of its enemies.

Here, Sir, what can be said most essential about Salt, those who know it thoroughly, will not be unaware of the two other Principles. It is to give you the knowledge of it that I extended the matter a little, I hope that you will make your profit from it. But remember that the natural Salt contains the two other Principles in its center, that it dissolves the sulfur by means of the mercury, that it is heated and rendered fertile, and that the mercury volatilizes them both.

It is time to finish this dialogue: the one that follows will show what a true Quintessence is, and several other things which will serve to supplement what has been omitted in this one.

Timagene

That I am obliged to you, Sir, for having explained to me so clearly, that you have made points so necessary to those who aspire to the knowledge of our Philosophy. The manner in which you deal with matter leaves no doubt, because you make others understand what you understand yourself, very different from those who affect obscure terms of the Ancients which they do not understand themselves, which the ignorant nevertheless find beautiful by a prejudice which is ordinary to them for all that they do not understand.

You made me know how to behave with those who deny or who approve of the reality of our Art, that one must not attach oneself as scrupulously as one does, to the search for the subject which hides the matter of the Sages, that one must know what one is looking for, so as not to go far to seek what one finds everywhere. This is what is the use of the knowledge of the natural principles hidden under the figure of Salt whose qualities you have explained to me by a method as simple as could be desired for my instruction.

I will make every effort to know it by practice, after having conceived it by theory, because without work we lack the means to achieve the perfection of our Art, as without Salt nature would lack it, to achieve the realization of its productions.

As this practice is very difficult to understand, and as the books have never explained it except by impenetrable enigmas, especially as regards the extraction of this marvelous Salt, there would be very few of those who will take part in this dialogue, who could guess the quomodo if I left it at that. The Materials are useless in the hands of the Artisans, when they do not have the instruments necessary to implement them.

I have shown the material, I will again declare how it must be extricated from its embarrassment for the public utility, and the satisfaction of curious lovers of truth, which I will do with the same ingenuity that has appeared in the contents of this book, and in the way that I have practiced it on some Metals.

How to extract the essential fixed salt from imperfect metals.

You will have a stoneware dish in which you will put a pound of steel filings, verdigris powder, or calcined Jupiter, on which you will pour a menstruum composed of distilled vinegar and the volatile spirit of Venus, equal part, which floats the matter two fingers across, taking care to stir the whole thing well with a spoon of the same metal as the one you use.

Then cover your terrine with another smaller terrine, which will go into the large one, so that nothing can exhale.

Expose it in a temperate place, neither too hot nor too cold, to let the menses act from morning to evening, or from evening to morning; uncover your terrine, and if there is foam above the liquor, remove it with the spoon, and put it aside, stir the matter, then cover it, and you will repeat the same thing every day twice, until your menses is well colored in red, blue, or yellow according to the nature of your metal.

Then you will pour your dyed menstruation by inclination into one or more filters of gray paper without gum, adding to it the liquor coming from the scum that you will have collected.

Then pour again menstruation on the matter, and operate in the same way as you did above, filter again, and start again until you have a sufficient quantity of tincture.

Put your tinted liquor in a glass cucurbit, and distill to the ashes until dry, the distillation being finished, dlute and cohobe the distilled liquor on the faeces, lute and distill what you repeat seven times in all, and make sure that your distillations end in the evening to start again the next day, in order to avoid the fracture of the cucurbit, which one must never touch, before it is well cooled.

Take the dead head which will have remained at the bottom of the curcurbite, grind it well on the marble into an impalpable powder, or else by soaking it with its menses; then put the whole, water and earth, in a glass retort whose lower part is lute, and having adapted a half-flask to it, distill with sand, small fire at the beginning, increasing it by degrees until it distills nothing; but above all you must take care of the swelling of the material, which disgorging into the flask, would oblige you to start the distillation again, which can be prevented with wet cloths that you will apply above the retort when you see the material swelling; that if a little had passed, it would only be necessary to rectify the distilled liquor in a glass curcurbite.

Take your rectified water that you prefer, and add to it the tenth part of the dead head that you will find in the retort, which you will grind exactly on the marble by soaking it with its water.

After which put the whole thing in a glass curcurbite which you will cover with another smaller curcurbite which will serve as a match, which you will fight well with strips of bladders soaked in beaten egg whites, which being well dried, place your vessel in a water bath which you will keep warm by means of some lamp or otherwise, for ninety days without interruption.

We will also maintain the water during all this time at the height of the period with an upside-down bottle, which we will take care to fill when it is empty. I make use of a cupboard in which my bath is placed, and where I do my digestions with ease.

When the three months have expired, you must put out the fire, and let the curcurbite cool, which you will delute to adapt its capital to it and to distil all the menses to the ashes. Then you will see your Salt appear on the surface of his faeces.

Give him back half of his distilled water, and keep the other half in a tightly corked bottle for later use to complete the separation of the Salt remaining in his land.

Cover your curcurbite with its encounter, and lut as you have done before, let it digest in the same bain-marie for ten days, which being expired, delute your vessel, and pour the liquor which it contains into a filter to separate it from its earth, then throw on this earth the other half of its distilled water, cover your vessel and let it digest for another ten days: then dilute, and pass this water through the filter to join it with the Other, which waters being distilled in a glass curcurbite to ashes until dryness, you will find at the bottom of your curcurbite your Salt which will have to be purified as it will be said.

Wash with the menses that you have just distilled, which being filtered, you will remove it by distillation, and you will join this Salt with the other.

Having put your Salt in a clean glass curcurbite, you will pour in distilled rainwater as much as it will take to dissolve it, evaporate this water to the ashes, pour in new ones that you will still evaporate or distill, and start again until the drops no longer have the taste or the smell of the solvent.

This being done, pour in more new rainwater, and your Salt being melted, filter it to separate it from some remaining faeces, after which evaporate it, and your Salt will remain pure.

But to have it even purer and to clarify it, dissolve it in rectified brandy, then distill in a bain-marie until dryness; your salt will be perfect for the use of Medicine.

Note:

The menses which has been used for this operation must be well guarded, because instead of having lost its virtue, it is made better by the impression of the salt with which it is sharpened.

The remaining earth, which is effectively dead, can be kept as one of the best astringents for wounds.

We should not be surprised at the length of an operation which can only be completed in four or five months. This time is short in comparison with the two whole years which I spent on it the first time I did it, not having had the same advantage as that which I present to others.

Note:

I know that there is a shorter and easier way to extract and purify our Principles, which is known to the Scholars. If I do not speak about it here, it is because it is right that each one enjoy alone a good that he has often acquired with great difficulty.

END