First Follows the Preface to this Little Book

Alphidius, one of the Ancient

Sages, says to everyone who may not resolve to obtain the art of the Philosophers' Stone original: "Steins der Philosophi"; the legendary substance capable of transmuting base metals into gold and granting long life, it is more useful to him that he does not practice therein at all than that he attempts anything. Likewise speaks Rasis Rhazes, or Abu Bakr al-Razi, a celebrated 9th-century Persian physician and alchemist in the little book of the Light of Lights: it is for everyone to guard themselves with diligence; he also highly admonishes? them herewith that no one should presume to understand the unknown mixing of the Elements. And Rosinus Zosimos of Panopolis, an early Greco-Egyptian alchemist wishes to say this: All those who involve themselves in this art and lack the understanding and knowledge of the things that the Philosophers have written in their books, they err infinitely; for the Philosophers have laid the foundation of this art in a natural beginning of all hidden workings. Although it is manifest that all lovely things take their origin, standing, and being out of the Earth according to the order of time, through the influence of the Constellations or Planets. Such as are the Sun and Moon and the others, together with the Four Qualities Heat, Cold, Moisture, and Dryness of the Elements which move without ceasing and work therein. Through this are brought forth all and every growing and birthing thing, each particular genus and form in its own Substance, just as it was created and set in the beginning of Creation by God the Creator.

Accordingly, all Metals also take their beginning out of the earth in a special and particular material slime? flowed out of the Four Properties of the four Elements, with the flowing-in of Metallic Powers and their totality from the influences of the Planets serving thereupon. All this is well described by the Master of Nature, Aristotle, in the fourth book of Meteorology original: "Metheorum"; Aristotle's treatise on natural phenomena, which alchemists cited as the authority on how minerals form underground, where he speaks of how Quicksilver Mercury is a common material of all metals. But it is to be known that in Nature, the first thing is the material heaped together out of the four Elements solely according to the knowledge and property of the