The Metallic Orchard

than animals original Latin: Animalia; animals indeed have at their very beginning sulfur, salt, and spirit original Latin: Sulphur, Sal ac Spiritum; in alchemical philosophy, these three principles represent the soul, the body, and the life force, [but] the element of water is likewise the most powerful element within them. However, humans—both here in this life and after their death—have something special above all other creatures, which I will mention and explain later.

The minerals original Latin: Mineralia and metals are also initially a slimy, fiery water and spirit; nature must first create the mixture beneath the earth through the addition of a new metallic sulfur, so that it shall become either a metal or a mineral. This then continues to grow, and over a long period of time becomes ripe, fixed stable and resistant to the heat of fire, and malleable, so that it can be melted, hammered, and stamped.

Once it has taken on a metallic form, no artist a term for an alchemist or practitioner of the Hermetic art is permitted to dissolve original Latin: solviren it and reduce it back into its principles original Latin: Principia; its original fundamental components. No? God and Nature alone are capable original Latin: capax of thoroughly dissolving such things again,