The Child-Bed of the Philosopher's Stone

flows upward at God’s command/ and mixes itself with the powers and properties of the stars/ and forms from this mixing-together a third earthly cavity. Thus the beginning of our seed original: "Saamens"; in alchemy, the "seed" is the concentrated essence or potential within matter that allows it to be transformed or "grown" into gold. is made/ and such is its first production/ whereby it can give enough testimony of its lineage. Dear reader/ pause here/ and weigh these words well/ and those of Hermes Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary Hellenistic figure to whom the foundational "Hermetic" alchemical texts are attributed./ where he says:

that the sun is the father of this Subject original: "Subjecti"; referring to the "First Matter" or the specific substance being operated upon. that you seek/ and the moon is its mother/ the wind or the air has carried it in its belly/ and that the earth is its wet-nurse original: "Saug-Amme"/ its center-point and its nursery.

This is the steel and the magnet of the Cosmopolite A pseudonym for Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636), a famous Polish alchemist who claimed the air contained a "hidden food of life.": Common air begets or makes this magnet appear/ and this magnet begets or makes appear the air/ or the Mercury of the Philosophers original: "Mercurium Philosophorum"; not the common liquid metal mercury, but a spiritual, universal substance believed to be the key to the Philosopher's Stone., which is the son of the sun and the moon/ because it is drawn out from the rays of the sun and the moon/ through the attractive power and force of this natural magnet/ or this magnetic steel/ which is found in all places and at all times; but that which is best/ is found in the belly of the Ram The zodiac sign Aries./ and in the head of the Bull The zodiac sign Taurus./ when the sun takes its orderly course between the signs of the Ram and the Bull/ to begin its course obliquely original: "obliqve"; referring to the angle of the sun's path across the sky. again through these first degrees of exaltation in these two houses; and because it [the sun] at that time [receives/possesses] a part of a greater and more lively