The Hermetical Triumph; or, The Victorious Philosophical Stone

...to satisfy his curiosity on this point, he took the trouble of searching for more than ten years to find the original German version of this little treatise. Having finally found it, he had it accurately translated into Latin. This new translation is taken from that copy and performed with the greatest possible accuracy. The quality of the original can be seen here by the truth that clearly appears in various places which have been restored to their former meaning—sections that were not only altered, but completely changed. One may judge this by the passage marked thirty-four, where the first translation says, following the Latin of Faber: "No one can attain our Mercury In alchemy, "Mercury" refers to a primary philosophical principle or a "living spirit" within metals, rather than just the common liquid metal. except from eight soft bodies, and none can be prepared without the other" original Latin: Mercurium nostrum nemo assequi potest; nisi ex mollibus octo corporibus neque ullum absque altero parari potest.. No one can attain our Mercury in any other way than from the eight soft bodies The author points this out as a ridiculous error; in alchemy there are usually seven metals/bodies, and "eight" would have signaled to a practitioner that the text was a forgery or nonsense., nor can one be prepared without the other. This treatise needed nothing else to make it despised. The author means that this single error was so significant that it was enough on its own to cause readers to dismiss the entire book as worthless.