On Mineral Calcination. Mineral Elixir
I
The practice of the mineral elixir consists in separating the fixed and the volatile in the purgation of these two substances and, in their new union, more perfect than that which Nature had given them.
II
Some minerals contain little volatile moisture, and others have a lot of it, but they are very impure and so closely linked to one’s body that it is complicated to separate them. Other minerals have received much of this volatile wet into their composition, and it is pure and easy to separate from the surrounding earth excrement.
Molten metals are deprived of their volatile moisture, which was the element of their vegetation.
III
The fixed radical humid is the subject and the unique matter of every form of the mixed. The purest matter also receives the purest form.
IV
The purest form gives the purest being to its mixed, and the perfection of the one results from the perfection of the other.
V
The mixed is freed from all impurities by corrupting it to separate the pure radical humid more easily. Then it is brought with cooking and animation up to the degree of fixed dyeing, which is the perfection of the chemical work.
VI
The physical mineral dye is the Phoenix reborn from its ashes. It is done by separating and extracting the fixed and the volatile from its viscous earth, which can be dissolved with air or ordinary water. If afterward, these principles are purified, the reunion is made with the help of the heat of the Sun and the Moon. With the help of the heat of the fire against nature, which is that of our foci, the saturnine poison is obtained, which kills all imperfect metals and heals all leprous metals of their kind, according to the saying of the Sages in this art.
VII
In the metals which have been melted dwells only the fixed, which is pure and in quantity in gold and silver. In all other metals, it is impure and in small quantities.
VIII
The volatile is found only in small quantities in metals that have not been melted. It is very impure in imperfections, but it is pure in gold and silver.
IX
In the medium minerals of the Art, such as the vitriols, the volatile is more or less abundant and more or less pure.
X
Extract the volatile from the medium ores of the Craft, purge it, then, with this volatile, extract the fixed from the perfect metals. Pin them together, and you have the elixir.
XI
There is a mineral known by true scholars, who hide it in their writings under various names, which contains abundantly the fixed and the volatile. Separate, purge, and fix them together without adding any extraneous matter. You will be witnesses of the secret movements of nature and the ways it follows in producing the mixtures it composes.
XII
If you mix heterogeneous spirits with the earth of perfect metals, you will have surprising but dangerous effects, as seen in lightning gold.
XIII
From the mineral of the Art, the mercury of the Art is extracted with calcination, and with the same operation, the sulfur and the salt of the Art are extracted from this mercury.
XIV
According to the weights of the Art, these three principles united by calcination compose the perfect mastery in the fourth wheel of the chemical work.
XV
This calcination is the conversion of the immediate food into the substance and seed of the mixture nourished by it.
XVI
Where the seed is found, generation is present, and as long as this seed is in a food that is proper to it, the center of the vegetation is found in that same place, and the principle of all the other actions of life.
XVII
The ultimate nourishment or the immediate nourishment is a juice that has not yet been converted into the substance of the substance and which, when it has changed into it, is no longer nourishment, but the very substance of the mixture.
XVIII
The metal that has been melted has no more juice, nourishment, or generation. It is a sterile substance, a body without a soul.
XIX
Thus, no seed can be extracted immediately from a metal that has been melted. Still, it can be regenerated by various corruptions to the state of metallic virgin earth, which contains the seed, and from which it can be extracted. This route is long and expensive.
XX
There is a nitrous mineral that easily gives us the two roots it possesses, from which a circulation is made, which vivifies and animates perfect metals. It extracts a substance that Art converts into metallic sulfur, which is the basis of the elixir.
XXI
The perfect body is the matrix where the two seeds are cooked and made particular. The three together become the tincture of the Philosophers, and not the body alone, because it has been stripped of every life-giving spirit.
XXII
Only the body can become fusible salt, capable of great effects. This body is called metallic earth, or leafy earth, and it is the mysterious Diana of the Ancients.
XXIII
Usually, this earth is impure on the outside because ordinarily, it is extracted from its mine with things full of spirits that are not metallic, making it unsuitable to become tincture or sulfur.
XXIV
These impurities can only be separated using the metallic spirit which is found in abundance in our permanent water.
XXV
Metallic spirit is abundant in certain minerals which are not metals, but it is so firmly bound to the volatile excrements that the separation can only be effected by corruption.
XXVI
The unique mineral abounding in both spirits, easy to separate, is hidden under as many names for as many things as there are in the world.
XXVII
This mineral contains in itself various substances: two, which are the body and the soul or the fixed and the volatile; three, if you want to distinguish the spirit from the soul; four, if one distinguishes fixed humidity from fixed drought in the fixed.
XXVIII
The fixed humidity and the fixed dryness are hidden in the fixed part of the mixture, which remains after calcination; soul and spirit are hidden in the pores of superfluous distilled moisture.
XXIX
Spirit and soul rise in the form of white smoke.
XXX
Spirit is a heavy smoke that descends quickly and hides in the pores of distilled superfluous moisture.
XXXI
The soul is a smoke that descends very late and joins the water only after a long circulation in the alembic and container; finally, it converts to water.
XXXII
Although the soul appears in white smoke, it is nevertheless called red smoke because it generates our red leafy earth by a slight and continuous decoction with the gold earth of the Philosophers.
XXXIII
The fifth substance contained in the nitrous mineral of the art, in addition to the previous four, is an excrement that must be separated and thrown away.
XXXIV
Fixed moisture causes the body to melt in the fire as metal, and fixed dryness causes the same body to freeze as soon as it is withdrawn from the fire; this dry substance is fixed salt.
XXXV
The radical substances must be separated, purged, and fixed, and the secret will be accomplished.
XXXVI
The practice is a strong distillation, an exposure of the black earth to resolve it, and a repeated distillation many times until all the earth is converted into a volatile spirit.
XXXVII
The water which is distilled pulls the dye out of the earth, and the two together become metallic sulfur. This metallic sulfur is again dissolved by the same water and cooked to the perfection of volatile gold sulfur. It dissolves again and finally cooks to perfection
of the elixir.
XXXVIII
The qualities and virtues of this physical earth are fixity, easy fusion, sweetness, beautiful color, transmuting projection and the healing of all diseases.
XXXIX
Thus heaven and earth are joined, water is drawn from the sun and moon’s rays, and the world’s spirit is made mineral.
XL
The elixir consists of the permanence of the celestial spirit in matter.
XLI
Nature begins the elixir but cannot finish it due to the weakness of heat, which cannot expel all the excrement.
XLII
We see that the animal draws in the air by respiration; this air contains the celestial spirit, which shelters the radical root.
XLIII
The radical viscous humid of the animal is not of air alone, which is too thin, nor of food alone, which is too coarse.
XLIV
The two together make up an average substance suitable to feed the animal. This substance is not entirely fixed, but only coagulated.
XLV
Thus the spirit of the world diversifies into the substances of the three realms to nourish and multiply them.
XLVI
This spirit is the one and only origin of the radical humid of the earth, where it combines differently with the different compounds it encounters.
XLVII
The spirit of the world is called the soul by analogy; therefore, the great world is said to be animated.
XLVIII
The spirit of the world is alcohol and the subtlest part of the elements. It is universal nature that is invisible, incorruptible, and indifferent to all forms but becomes visible in a pure body, visible as fixed salt.
XLIX
From this soul with the body that is proper to it, with the decoction, the fixed physical tincture is made, in which all the movement of nature ends and finishes.
L
Nature cannot achieve this perfect rest without the help of art.
LI
The chemical art continues the practice of the elixir with the purgation of the black earth to whiteness and redness. It purifies the volatile spirit and accomplishes the earth’s solution by her spirit.
LII
The ancient spagyrists had the custom of imbibing the raw earth many times with their raw spirit and removing the phlegm (dephlegmer) in all eight days. During this work, the colors appear: black, white, and red, but this road is long and dangerous.
LIII
The chemical work cannot be accomplished from a perfect metal with aqua fortis and vulgar mercury.
LIV
True water which is homogeneous with metals, must be extracted from a martial and solar ore, and by means of this water the tincture of the metal must be extracted from its body. In this operation the dye is nothing more than a putrefied gold.
LV
The mineral elixir, in addition to the virtue of transmuting, can receive various other virtues through the Art, according to the artist’s will.
LVI
Each elixir can be converted into another elixir in the same way that foods change into the substance of the fed mixture.
LVII
Nature, by her own movement, exercises this reciprocal conversion in the nutrition of the mixed.
LVIII
The reason for this conversion is the action of one spirit on the other and the need that where the weakest is found, this must follow the determination of the strongest.
LIX
The strongest converts the weakest. The fixed is stronger than any volatile, and so the volatile feeds the fixed.
LX
The food resists the spirits of digestion the more it contains heterogeneous substances.
LXI
The food that resists so that it cannot be converted is a poison in the elemental body since it tames this body and converts it to itself, or it generates a third substance with the mutual corruption of the food and the body it was meant to nourish.
LXII
The impure and raw metallic spirits kill the animal that wants to feed on them because they resist and alter powerfully.
LXIII
Everything feeds and multiplies more surely with the pure spirits of its realm than with others.
LXIV
The decoction of mineral spirits is longer and more difficult than that of vegetables and animals.
LXV
Solar and lunar elixirs contain greater virtues than plant elixirs.