On Mineral Distillation. Mineral Elixir
Aphorism I
The union assumes that all the other previous operations have been exactly performed, because it requires immediate contact between the fixed and the volatile root, which depends on their purity.
II
The elixir is produced by union, and acquires its ultimate perfection by coagulation.
III
Wherever nature meets a suitable subject to receive its impressions, it always places the roots of union through distillation and through the operations that precede it.
IV
The cause which acts in this natural work is none other than the internal heat of the fixed root, which is never without this heat, as is seen in the grain of wheat.
V
For the operations of Nature, the Sky serves as the capital of the vessel to distill, sublimate and calcine. The earth acts as a filter to purify the dissolved matter.
VI
Nature dissolves fixed matter with underground water.
VII
This solution, penetrating the springs of the fountains, communicates wonderful virtues to their waters.
VIII
It is not water that is the solvent, but the salt dissolved in it which produces these virtues, and it can be separated by distillation.
IX
The salt of these fountains is of many kinds: vitriolous, antimonial, sulphurous, etc.
X
The water which contains the vitriol is the best of all, and the better the more its vitriol is pure and fixed.
XI
The virtues of pure vitriol are wonderful. His spirit makes vulgar mercury a kind of panacea, and by this means one can make a true medicine against every disease, if one knows which vitriol I mean and which mercury.
XII
The substance of pure vitriol corrects the poison of any metal.
XIII
The pure essence of vitriol does not yield at all to the wet radical of gold and silver.
XIV
Thermal waters containing only the fixed matter of vitriol are the best purgative waters.
XV
Those containing crude vitriol purge both top and bottom vitriol, fixed without the volatile cause feces and urine.
XVI
Those which contain the fixed vitriol well united with its volatile are very invigorating.
XVII
Other thermal waters are subject to agitation impetuously due to a crust of sulfur that covers them and prevents the release of volatile spirits.
XVIII
These spirits, coming out en masse, make a noise and a tumult in the air like earthquakes.
XIX
After these upheavals, the rains usually come.
XX
There are fountains which convert iron into copper, this happens because the vitriol is a rarefied copper and which abounds in metallic spirits, and because these waters contain a lot of vitriol.
XXI
Other fountains convert to stone because they contain many stony spirits, which, while in the water, are continually dissolved in it by the continual access of a new dissolved spirit. But when they are drawn from the fountain, they coagulate like corals, which are soft in the sea and harden in the air in the same way as pearls.
XXII
Other very clear fountains incessantly throw flames because they contain a lot of very fine and combustible sulfur, which is the excrement of incombustible metallic sulfur.
XXIII
Other fountains do not spurt flames but kindle all combustible and flammable things put into them, which is also the case with molten saltpeter.
XXIV
The abundant incombustible sulfur that these waters contain prevents the combustible sulfur mixed with them from igniting. Still, the water penetrates the combustible things which are thrown into it, so that it increases their heat and their fat with its own by exciting the flame.
XXV
The cause of these marvelous effects of Nature must be attributed to the volatile spirits which rise from the earth with a continuous movement that always enhances their magnetism, and purifies their little body until they can, passing again through the pores of the earth, unite intimately with the fixed matter therein.
XXVI
In the same way art perfectly purifies the volatile spirits to unite them with the fixed ones, and fulfill the secret.
XXVII
These two purified and united roots are the true material of gold which was hidden in the darkness of a very impure mineral.
XXVIII
Before being purified, this mineral is full of excrement, which hinders the transmutatory virtue.
XXIX
From a hundred pounds of this mineral scarcely one pound of fixed root and one pound of volatile root can be extracted, and only with many extractions.
XXX
The fixed substance, after being separated, must be purged with a solution in ordinary water, filtered and evaporated.
XXXI
It dissolves easily in water because it is of the nature of salt; terrestrial excrements, on the other hand, are not capable of dissolving, and so they go to the bottom of the container.
XXXII
Then it is lightly calcined again, dissolved, filtered and evaporated. These operations are repeated several times.
XXXIII
The volatile substance contains a lot of dissolved fixed substance, which in the long run will be able to overcome and fix the volatile up to the perfection of elixir.
XXXIV
Artists add a few portions of fixed root to accelerate fixation.
XXXV
The excrements of the fixed substance contained in the bird are those which cause the water to become cloudy.
XXXVI
The spirit substance also contains aerial and igneous excrements of the nature of sulfur, which float on the water, in the manner of fuel oil and fat, like a pellicle after the first distillation, and which at the slightest movement of the water separate into minute particles, like atoms in all water.
XXXVII
In addition to these substances, spirit substance contains excremental phlegm, which has the odor of ordinary water.
XXXVIII
This excremental sulfur that floats on the distilled water is combustible and burns like the sulfur mined from the mountains and sold vulgarly.
XXXIX
All these excrements of spirit substance must be removed: the terrestrial and sulfurous ones by filtration, and the watery ones by many distillation.
XL
After these purifications, the two roots acquire their ultimate and perfect purity only with sublimation.
XLI
Sublimation cannot be done until all previous purifications have been performed, because the body and spirit cannot unite without being pure.
XLII
The sublimate is called Azoth, and must then be cooked to the perfect elixir with a slow and continuous external fire and for a long time.
XLIII
The root cause of cooking is none other than the internal fire of the volatile substance; hence the elixir is called the son of fire.