The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged

On the Philosopher's Stone. 9

sophists are identified. For they, ignorant of the foundation of this renowned art, and inventing whatever they please from their own brain, reveal their errors to all.
The harmony mentioned, however, consists primarily in the knowledge of the matter, and its solution, weight, regulation of fire, and augmentation.
As far as the matter is concerned, it is unique, having within itself all that it needs, and from which the artist prepares whatever he wishes, N I S V S namely in the SAND, as the philosopher Anastratus says in the Turba: Nothing is more precious than the red sand of the sea, and it is the spittle of the Moon, which is joined to the light of the Sun, and congeals. That this unique matter is required, Agadmon testifies in the same place, where he says: Know, that unless you take this body of mine lacking spirit, you will by no means obtain what you desire, because nothing foreign enters the work, nor anything unless it is pure. Therefore, abandon all plurality. For nature is content with one thing, and he who is ignorant of it will perish.
In the same way, Arnold of Villanova writes in his Flower of Flowers: Our Stone is made from one thing and with one thing. Similarly, he speaks to the King of Naples: Everything that is in our Stone is necessary to it, nor does it need anything foreign: since our Stone is of one nature, and one thing. And Rosinus says: Know that there is one unique thing, from which all things you desire are made. And Lilium: You have no need but of one thing, which in every stage of our work is changed into another nature. So also Geber in his Summa says: Our Stone is one, one medicine, to which we add nothing, nor diminish anything, we only remove superfluities. And Scites in the Turba: The foundation of this art is one thing, which is stronger and more sublime than all things, and is called the sharpest vinegar, which made pure gold a spirit, without which neither whiteness, nor blackness, nor redness exists. And when it is mixed with the body, it is contained, and becomes one with it, and returns it into spirit, and tinctures it with a spiritual, invariable tincture; again, from the tinctured [body] it receives a corporeal tincture, which cannot be destroyed. And if you place the body without vinegar upon the fire, it will be burned and corrupted. But from these words of Scites, someone concluding might infer, not one, but two things, namely the body,
B and vine-