Letter to the Gold-Seeking Lovers of Chemistry and Alchemy

Art, they will reveal dear Nature original German: "die liebe Natur"; a common personification in alchemical texts, treating Nature as a divinely-ordained, living teacher. to him.

7. In this Nature, one will find above all else that everything which has been created has a seed, and by means of this seed—to be understood as both female and male—it gives birth to its own kind; and that everything created by God has received the command to multiply after its kind. That this should not, nor cannot, be otherwise is testified by Holy Scripture and Christ himself, where he speaks: Can one gather grapes from thorns? A reference to Matthew 7:16. In an alchemical context, this implies that the "Stone" must be made from a substance that inherently contains the "seed" of its own nature. One part of this is to be understood as reproduction, the other as the specific nature of the kind.

8. Although the knowledge of Chaos In alchemy, "Chaos" refers to the Materia Prima or the unformed, primal state of matter before it is organized into elements., the separation of the Elements, and similar sciences do not teach you how to prepare the Philosopher’s Stone original Latin: "Lapidem Philosophorum" directly original Latin: "directe", these preliminary circumstances are nonetheless necessary to know to this extent: so that one may reach the knowledge of how and from what every being was created, and of what properties it consists; how the four qualities The four Aristotelian qualities: hot, cold, moist, and dry. in every composite substance original Latin: "Composito"; refers to any physical body made of combined elements. are constituted