A New Light of Alchemy

ON MERCURY.

sublimates original: "sublimat." In alchemy, sublimation refers to the process of a substance being heated into a vapor and then cooling back into a solid or liquid, often used here to describe how vapors move through the earth's crust. through the pores, and by its own wisdom distributes it to each place (as we related in the preceding pages); thus, from the variety of locations, various things also come forth and are born. There are those who believe that Saturn Lead has one seed, Gold original: "aurum" has another, and so on for the remaining metals; but these ideas are empty. There is only one single seed: the same is found in Lead as is found in Gold, and the same in Luna Silver as in Mars Iron.

But the location within the earth was different—if you understand me correctly—although in Silver, Nature ceased her work sooner than in the Sun Gold, and likewise for the others. For when that vapor is sublimated from the center of the earth, it passes through places that are either dry or hot.

If, therefore, the vapor passes through hot and pure places where the fatness of sulfur fatness of sulfur: (Latin: pinguedo sulphuris) refers to the oily, combustible principle that alchemists believed gave metals their body and substance. clings to the walls, that vapor—which the Philosophers have called the Mercury of the Philosophers Mercury of the Philosophers: not the common quicksilver found in thermometers, but a purified, essential "first matter" that serves as the root of all metals.—adapts itself and joins with that fatness, which it afterwards sublimates with itself. And then an unctuosity original: "unctuositas"; a sticky, oily, or "greasy" state of matter essential to the formation of minerals. is formed; leaving behind the name of "vapor," it takes the name of "fatness," which afterwards, coming by sublimation to other places which the preceding vapor already