Aula Lucis, or The House of Light

upon which God has placed his seal, and you may not find it in books, for it was never entirely written. Your best course is to consider the way of nature, for there it may be found, but not without repeated, deep, and searching meditations. If this attempt fails you, you must pray for it (not that I hold it an easy or a common thing to attain revelations, for we have none in England Vaughan may be making a satirical remark about the lack of spiritual insight or religious prophets in his contemporary England during the mid-1600s.), but God may reveal it to you by some ordinary and nearly natural means. In short, if you cannot attain the knowledge of it in this life, yet you shall know it in your own body, when you are past knowing of it in this subject original: "subject"—in alchemy, the "subject" is the base matter being worked upon in the lab..

But because I will not deprive you of those helps which I may lawfully communicate, I tell you that our preparation is purification original: "purgation"—the process of cleansing or scouring away impurities.. Yet we do not purify by common, ridiculous sublimations original: "sublimations"—the process of heating a substance until it becomes vapor and then collecting it as a solid again., nor the more foolish filtrations, but by a secret, tangible, natural fire. And he who knows this fire, and how to wash with it, knows the key...