The King Showing Himself to All the World

...separated, and brought into its movement, so that it might circulate circulire: the process of continuous distillation where a liquid is evaporated and condensed back down in the same vessel for a long time, rising and falling, until it is entirely dissolved solviret: broken down from a solid state into a liquid or "philosophical water" and transformed into a beautiful, transparent, crystalline water. For our entire work is nothing other than a transformation of the earth into a water, and constant boiling, until the earth enters into putrefaction Fäulung: the stage of "rotting" or breakdown, often called the Nigredo, which precedes purification. This earth rots with the water and purifies itself, and when this has happened, the entire art of our mastery is accomplished. Nevertheless, this Stone Stein: the "Philosopher's Stone," though here it refers to the matter in its intermediate, gaseous state of ours is only a vapor and mist, which one calls an air; this rises bit by bit from the corporeal Mercury Mercurio: the "quicksilver" or spirit of the metal, not necessarily common liquid mercury upwards into the height and spreads out into its sphere Sphæram: the upper part of the glass vessel, likened to the atmosphere of the earth, then falls back down again into the depths through the dew. Therefore Hermes Hermes: Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary father of alchemy named it an air, for the generation of our offspring occurs in the air, and that which is born is wisely born in the air original: "nam generatio geniti nostri fit in aëre, & nascens sapienter in aëre nascitur.". Likewise: Elsewhere it ascends from the earth into the heavens and again descends into the earth, acquiring the power of the things above and the things below original: "Alibi ascendit à terra in cœlum iterumque descendit in terram , acquirendo vim superiorum & inferiorum." This is a core tenet of the Emerald Tablet, the foundational text of alchemy.. But through the constant boiling and unceasing heat, it always becomes somewhat thicker through the continuous rising and falling; yet this does not happen quickly, because the entire body must first reach the height of its circle. For only when this period periodus: a complete cycle of the alchemical process has elapsed and been brought to an end does it begin and start to