The Metallic Orchard

A decorative headpiece consisting of three horizontal rows of ornamental floral and scrollwork motifs.

Whoever wishes to achieve something good in metallurgy original: Metallurgia—these are the very words of Theophrastus referring to Paracelsus, the famous Swiss-German physician and alchemist Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541)—he must first and foremost know that metals and minerals original: Metalla und Mineralia are found in no other place than in the earth, mountains, stones, and crevices, where the mineral waters, together with their mixtures, dwell together and have their workshop; there they also continue to grow or remain lying still. From there emerges the root, together with the Matter of the Philosophers Materia Philosophorum; also known as the "First Matter" or Prima Materia, the primordial substance required to create the Philosopher's Stone; which matter and power is to be found in water and fire. Now, this is the true Matter: a water that is not wet, and yet is an element and a water. It is all one thing, which no water can be without the earth; for it is of the earth. The earth is the food, nourisher, and sustainer of such matter; it is spiritual, full of spiritual life original: Spiritualisches Lebens; heavenly, earthly, magnetic. It is refreshed by the pure dew of heaven Himmels-Thau; in alchemical tradition, celestial dew was believed to be a medium that carried a universal life force or "astral seed" from the heavens down into the earth to gestate minerals; the earth harbors it and is its mother. For from the beginning it was a spirit, an air, a fire, a water; catch this, and enclose it all into one. Every metal requires this heavenly, material, active power, this