The Hermetic Museum, Restored and Enlarged

Of the Philosopher's Stone. 11

union of fixed and non-fixed mercurial nature, spiritual and corporeal, cold and humid, hot and dry, and can by no means be made from anything else. And Richard the Englishman says: The Stone is one, one medicine, which according to the philosophers is called REBIS, that is, from a twofold thing, namely from a body and a white or red spirit, in which many fools have erred, explaining it in various ways:
Rebis is in the most correct form in the aforementioned descriptions, that is, two things: and these two things are one thing, that is, water joined to the body, by which the body is dissolved into spirit, that is, into mineral water, from which it was made from the beginning: And thus from body and spirit is made one mineral water, which is called Elixir, that is, ferment: because then water and spirit are one thing, from which is made the tincture, and the medicine for purifying all bodies. Therefore, from one thing, which is the water of the body and spirit, the medicine is perfected. And thus according to the philosophers we have the nature of sulfur and mercury above ground, from which gold and silver are made under ground.
And Bernard, Count of Treviso and the Marches, says: Our work is made from one root and two crude mercurial substances, taken, and drawn from the ore, pure and clean, joined by fire in friendship, as the material itself demands, continually cooked, until from two one is made, etc.
And Basil Valentine in the book of natural and supernatural things, chapter 4, says: In all truth, by the love of God, I will moreover reveal this to you, that the root of philosophical sulfur, which is a celestial spirit, along with the root of spiritual and hyperphysical mercury, and the principle of spiritual salt, exists in one and is found in a single matter, from which the stone, which was before me, is made, and not from many: although by all philosophers mercury by itself, sulfur by itself, and salt by itself are particularly alleged, as if mercury is found in one, sulfur in another, and salt in a third. But I tell you that these things, thus brought forth from their abundance, demonstrate in what [substances] they are copiously found, and how they can be conveniently applied and prepared in many particular ways, both for healing human bodies and for transmuting metals. But that universal thing (indeed the highest treasure of this earthly wisdom, and the principles of all three things) is a certain unique thing, and they are found and extracted simultaneously in one thing, which is able to convert all metals into one: And they are the true spirit of mercury, and the soul of sulfur, united together with spiritual salt, and enclosed under one heaven, and also dwelling in one body; and they are the dragon and the eagle, the king and the lion, spirit and body, tinging the body of gold into a true medicine, etc.
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