PREFACE.

...or noise it dissolves; indeed, it does so as sweetly and naturally as ice melts by the benefit of warm water. If you have found this, you possess the thing from which gold is produced by nature. And although all metals and all things have their origin from it, nothing is so befriended to it as gold. For impurity adheres to other things, but to gold, none! Therefore, it is like a mother to it.

Treatise 3.

Tractat. 3.

The first matter original: "materia" of metals is twofold. But one without the other does not create a metal. The first and principal is the Moisture original: "Humidum" mixed with the heat of the air. This the Philosophers A term used for alchemists or seekers of natural wisdom called Mercury In alchemy, Mercury represents the fluid, transformative, and feminine principle of matter, which is governed by the rays of the Sun and Moon in the Philosophical Sea. The second is the dry quality of the earth, which they called Sulphur The masculine, combustible, and stabilizing principle that provides form to the fluid Mercury.

Treatise 4.

Tract. 4.

After the elements Earth, Air, Fire, and Water cast their virtues into the center of the earth, the Archeus The "inner craftsman" or vital spirit believed to govern the formation of minerals within the earth—through distilling by the heat of perpetual motion—sublimates To turn a solid into vapor through heat them like a vapor toward the surface of the earth. For the earth is porous, and that wind or vapor, trickling through the pores of the earth, is resolved into water, from which things...