On Mineral Solution. Mineral Elixir
Aphorism I
The resolution of all mysteries is obtained by the same method which is the way of nature, which always operates by the action of volatile spirits or original magnetisms on the same very general matter, which by itself is not determined by any genus nor particular species of natural compound.
II
This very general matter is distinguished and specific by three types of spirits that occupy it and determine it by their magnetism, as soon as it begins to rise and become sublimated; by these spirits it is then carried out of the bosom of the earth where it was born.
III
Thus this matter specified at its birth is nowhere to be found. without determination, that is, in its universality.
IV
Matter becomes corrupted in substance and dissolves into its integral parts when the external spirits more powerful than internal ones meet this magnet driving out the internal spirits and settling in their place; thus, the form of the previous mixed one is destroyed.
V
The form of the mixed consists of a certain well-proportioned measure of spirits. When this is lost, the form of the mixed is destroyed even before the first internal spirits are expelled from it.
VI
Form, indeed, is but an arrangement and organization of the parts of matter, which is thus disposed both by celestial spirits and by those of matter itself.
VII
Thus, there is always some form in the matter since it enjoyed a magnetism from its first elementation or creation; for one element cannot ally itself with another without a spirit making its union or magnetism.
VIII
This first composition is all the more perfect and lasting, the more subtle and active the spirit that produces it is, and the more the matter it penetrates has very fine and direct pores.
IX
The material principles compound each other to an increasing extent by the reciprocal alterations of their magnetisms, and unite under the forms which produce the determinations of the spirits by which matter is penetrated.
X
When many parts composed in the same way meet, they do not destroy each other, but on the contrary, join and reunite through the conformity of their magnetism.
XI
This union is all the stronger the more the pores are direct, fine, well formed and similar; thus their contact is more immediate and responds to a greater surface extension.
XII
The solution has its degrees, as well as the composition, and it takes place in order from the most composed parts to the simplest parts, and this in the proportion in which the external spirit or magnetism wins and ruins the internal one.
XIII
The solution of the mixed is not a resolution down to the raw material of all things, but only up to the specific and very close matter of the mixed that one wants to dissolve. And this matter is none other than the general one possessed by the spirits who determine it to the species of the mixed.
XIV
The same qualities of the elements are found in both fixed and volatile spirits of the same genus. There is no other difference than that of proportion between the degrees of these qualities, both in the fixed and in the volatile.
XV
Spirits are clothed in a similar body in all realms; the fixes of fixed salt, the volatiles of a smoky substance.
XVI
In the different realms, these bodies differ from each other due to the elemental qualities. In the mineral realm, earth and water dominate; in the vegetal realm, air and water; in the animal, air and fire.
XVII
In the mineral realm, the fixed root is bitter; in the vegetal and animal realm, it is salty. The volatile root in the mineral is sour and sorrel; the vegetal and animal roots are sweet.
XVIII
The Pontic bitterness and sourness or acidity derive from the excess of earth and the lack of air and fire. The sweetness from the opposite cause.
XIX
The “secret” of minerals is much more difficult to obtain than that of plants or animals, because the lack of air and fire in the former makes their cooking more difficult and slower.
XX
This difficulty is indicated by the character given to Mercurius, whose symbol is composed of a semicircle, a circle and a cross.
Concerning the Moon’s attitude, the semicircle without a cross means the ease to be transmuted. Concerning the Sun, the full circle indicates the perfection of the metallic Mercurius it contains.
XXI
Metallic mercury is the only matter among metals able to reach ultimate perfection; at this point, it can be considered the physical elixir . It differs from all the metals only in being more or less pure and more or less cooked.
XXII
The hardships suffered in the hard work to convert the bodies of imperfect metals into gold and silver are vain and useless if one does not separate their Mercurius, on which one must work.
XXIII
Mercury is a pure but still raw gold; which cooks and matures both due to its natural heat and the fire of the mine or the Art.
XXIV
Chemical gold (alchemical gold) is more perfect than natural gold, because it is purer and more cooked.
XXV
Natural gold does not penetrate imperfect metal bodies due to its coarse density. Chemical gold penetrates them through its tenuousness.
XXVI
All imperfect metallic bodies are equally gross and not different from each other, due to their impurity.
XVII
The impurity derives from the cooking defect. This lack comes from the weakness of the volatile spirit. For they alone have the power to cook their own matter in the mine.
XXVIII
The strength of spirits comes from their abundance, and their weakness from their small number.
XXIX
Spirits digest their own body and then unite it with fixed matter; thus their magnetism increases little by little, and the impurities which are contrary and incapable of cooking are expelled.
XXX
The impurities are attached to the metals while they are in the mine, more or less, as seen in the fruits that reach maturity.
XXXI
The metal which is out of its mine, and that which is molten, no longer reject their impurities through their internal heat; in fact, they have lost their volatile spirits, and consequently the stirring, driving and vegetative heat.
XXXII
The fixed spirits which remain in the metal are not sufficient to carry out the separation of the impurities, because they are in too small a quantity and their envelopes are too strong and thick to be able to extend beyond the sphere of their magnetism. The outer spirits of the great world are equally unable to produce this purification because they are still too far from the nature of the inner spirits, and they are better suited to dissolving bodies than cooking and purifying them.
XXXIII
Therefore the metals with which some buildings are covered, and which are always exposed to the sky, never reach maturity.
XXXIV
But if these metals were placed in a mine sufficiently impregnated with metallic spirits, they would improve over time.
XXXV
In that case, nature would dissolve them in rust or metallic earth and after having dissolved and rarefied them it would more easily reach the goal of perfecting them, since it would only remain to cook them and purify them of their extraneous parts; what could happen in the space of time of one hundred years.
XXXVI
The only remedy for the imperfections of metals separated from their mine is the metallic ore elixir of the Physicists, and this because of the abundance of its spirits, its penetration, its purity and its fixity.
XXXVII
The purity of the two spirits greatly facilitates maturation, both in the natural opera and in that of the Art.
XXXVIII
Art, not nature, through physical operations leads the subject to a perfect purity.
XXXIX
Neither solution nor physical sublimation can be accomplished in the metallic fixed substance alone, for it does not rise by fire. Nor can this be done for the volatile part alone, since it is so dry that it cannot be reduced to water by distillation.
XL
The volatile spirit easily unites with the fixed through its vehicle which is superfluous water.
XLI
Thus the two spirits together are composed in a permanent water which is the medium of the union of the tinctures which are fixed and volatile.
XLII
In this same way, Nature coagulates the volatile spirit with the fixed one, because first Nature converts it into air, then this air into water through the humidity of the earth, finally Nature coagulates this water with the viscous power of the earth.
XLIII
Therefore in our first distillation the water comes out first of all; then the air leaves in the form of smoke containing the spirit, and this smoke soon enters the distilled water.
XLIV
This volatile spirit is thus drowned in water and cannot sublimate its metallic earth by itself, because this humidity makes it too fugitive.
XLV
But this spirit water must convert the metallic earth into water, so that they unite, and the spirit and water serve as a means of sublimation.
XLVI
Indeed, fixed earth dissolves in water by wetting it many times with spirit water and by very light and continuous digestions until everything becomes heavy water.
XLVII
Right away, this heavy water has to be purified by seven distillations; then of this water, immediately with the perfect bodies dissolved in it, the metallic sulfur must be produced.
XLVIII
Nature does the same thing in mines, since the metallic spirit is originally contained therein in an airy body. The spirit of the earth converts this air into water, this water meets the viscous and greasy earth which it dissolves and unites to itself inseparably, finally from this double matter by cooking alone nature generates both white and red metallic sulfur.
XLIX
These two colors depending on the degree of cooking.
L
Matter next to heavy water is nothing other than the two roots. Heavy or ponderous water is the matter close to sulfur, sulfur is the matter close to metallic bodies, both in Art and in Nature.
LI
The purity of heavy water, sulfur, and metal depends on the purity of principles, both in Art and in Nature.
LII
These degrees depend on the cooking or on the increase of the specific magnetism which repels and separates the heterogeneous substances which prevent the immediate contact of the principles and consequently the perfect union of the two roots.
LIII
This cooking is done with the heat as well as the inner fire of the princes.
LIV
The ultimate goal is to rest from any alteration in the minerals, and it is none other than solar perfection, that is, the purity of gold.
LV
Both fixed and volatile matter of minerals is very dry by nature.
LVI
It may, nevertheless, be converted into metallic water, and become susceptible to all the changes which art wishes to produce in it, for the form of an element may be communicated successively from one to another by their similar qualities, and this conversion becomes reciprocal for through the opposites, both in Nature and in Art.
LVII
The sulfur, before being reduced in a metallic body, is easily liquefied due to the metallic humidity which it contains in abundance, although in this same drought predominates.
LVIII
When the metallic sulfur has become a metallic body, it is very difficult to liquefy, both because of its fixation and because of the coarse impurities.
LIX
Sulfur is called the dryness of metals, and Mercurius is the metallic moisture because of the predominance of these qualities.
LX
Sulfur is water that does not wet the hands, which is due to the abundance of humidity, which is not yet fixed, but only coagulated.
LXI
Physicists have composed this water with all that is necessary for their elixir: the two roots, the fixed and the volatile, so that they no longer need to be purified and cooked.
LXII
Metallic sulfur is not found in the mines alone and separate, but is always hidden in the earth of the mines.
LXIII
The sparks that are seen shining in the earth of the mines are small metallic bodies produced by the sulfur through a natural firing.
LXIV
Metallic sulfur is very different from common sulfur, which is commonly sold under this name. So also the natural metallic mercury from the vulgar mercury known under this name.
LXV
Common mercury allows itself to be altered by metals, and does not alter it at all. On the contrary, the Mercurius of the Physicists alters the metals and does not receive any alteration from them.
LXVI
The Mercurius of the Physicists hardens and retrogrades gold so that it can no longer be reduced in the body otherwise than with this same Mercurius, by slow cooking.
LXVII
Common mercury is not a metallic principle but a made metal, albeit an imperfect one. Physicists’ Mercurius is a metallic principle and not a metal in fact.
LXVIII
In common mercury, the aqueous part of metallic mercury dominates over the dry metallic part which is found in small quantities.
LXIX
Metallic sulfur is incombustible, but not so the vulgar one.
LXX
One and the other sulfur are metallic fat, but one is pure and the other impure, and is but the excrement of the pure fat.
LXXI
In metallic sulfur the principles of composition are united in an equal proportion and conformity of substance. In common sulfur all the elements are still unequal, heterogeneous with each other and disproportionate, and therefore it is combustible.
LXXII
The one and the other sulfur are of three types: mineral, vegetable, animal, and according to the kingdom to which they belong, they are called: sulfur, rubber and fat.
LXXIII
Where more food is found, there will also be more sulfur than in any kind of mixture.
LXXIV
Animal fat is an excrement useful to Nature, which, in the absence of another food that is easier to cook, converts it into nutritious juice by digesting it and purifying it with the lymph impregnated by the specific spirits of the animal.
LXXV
Only Nature can make this change and not Art, or at least with great difficulty.
LXXVI
Metal is not the material of physical stone, because it contains only fixed sulfur. Nor is any excrementitious mineral the matter of physical stone, for it contains but little mercury, without any pure sulfur
LXXVII
A certain ore is found that contains quantities of pure mercury and pure sulfur, and the preparation of which is not even difficult for a good artist.
LXXVIII
The two roots, the fixed and the volatile, are extracted from this mineral by means of a violent distillation.
LXXIX
These two roots are purified one after the other and putrefied together by slow heat, to dissolve one by the other.
LXXX
They are then combined with the circulation to make a weighty mineral water which must then be purified by seven distillations.