The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged

10 The Golden Treatise,

...and vinegar (as he calls it) is required, and that the moist must necessarily be joined with the dry, lest the dry be burned by the fire, but preserved from such combustion by the moist. Indeed, I gladly subscribe to this sound conclusion, while preserving the aforementioned philosophical opinions in their value and truth. For it is more certain than certain that there is only one matter of our blessed stone, named by the wise with many names, which ingenious Nature has long since prepared, and willed that it alone, and no other matter of our stone in the whole world, should exist. This matter is subject to the eyes of everyone; the whole world beholds it, touches it, loves it, yet does not know it. It is noble and base, precious and of little moment, and is found everywhere. Theophrastus Paracelsus, in his book On the Tincture of Physicians, calls it the RED LION, named by many, but known by few. Hermes, in the 1st chapter of his treatise, calls it quicksilver coagulated in the innermost chambers. In the Turba, it is here and there called aes. In the Rosary of the Philosophers, it is designated by the name of Salt. But, to be brief, this matter of ours has as many names as there are things in the world; hence it is less known by the foolish. I call those foolish who approach the art without prior knowledge of nature and its properties, like a donkey to the manger, not knowing for what purpose it extends its snout, as Arnold says. Hence Geber aptly states in Summa perfectionis: He who in himself ignores the natural principles, he is already very far removed from this art. And the Rosary says: I advise that no one should involve himself in this art to discover anything unless he knows the true principle of nature and its regimen, which being known, he needs no more things than one, nor does he require great expenses, since there is one stone, one medicine, one vessel, one regimen, and one disposition. Nevertheless, this single matter is so separated by the work of nature and the experience of the artist, as Theophrastus speaks, that it is transmuted into that white eagle, and the splendor of the sun no longer illuminates the spagyric with its rays: or, as Basilius Valentinus says, that from it is made a white spirit like snow, and likewise another red spirit like blood, which two spirits contain a third hidden within themselves. Hence King Aros says, not badly: Our medicine is made from two things of one essence, namely from the uni-