RAYMUNDUS LULLUS

of the mastery original: "magisterii"; referring to the Magisterium or the "Great Work" of alchemy. Practice, indeed, is that part in which the form and the mode of operating correctly is described, according to the requirements of the disposition previously known through theory. And therefore, because neither the dispositions of the aforementioned bodies, nor their natures, can be known except through the consideration of things natural, things unnatural, and things contrary to nature This tripartite division—natural, unnatural, and contrary to nature—is borrowed from Galenic medicine and applied here to the "health" or "perfection" of metals, we divide theory into three parts for a better understanding. This is because the dispositions of the whole changeable body, in general, are only three: namely, temperament, imbalance, and neutrality.

First, it must be known that temperament is comprised under natural things, because formally its complexion complexion: the specific combination of the four primary qualities—hot, cold, moist, and dry—within a substance is made of subtle parts joined together at once. Regarding the compositions of these parts, the philosophers have spoken at length, taking a broad view insofar as they could understand the continuation and gathering of parts when that continuity receives its own composition.

Imbalance original: "Intemperamentum"; also translated as distemper or lack of balance, however, is comprised under those things which are contrary to nature; and therefore it is called by another name, "corruption," or the distancing from true temperament, with which the whole exists and without which there is nothing.

Neutrality, in truth, contains the middle ground of the aforementioned parts; called by another name, it is the "ligament" of the stated extremes—namely of temperament and imbalance—or otherwise it is called the middle disposition between two contraries.

CAP. II.

And therefore you must observe that true temperament is the natural disposition of perfect bodies, through which natural actions are perfected in the perfection of the medicine medicine: in alchemy, this refers to the Elixir or Philosopher's Stone, which "heals" base metals into gold, in which they are perfected without any other medium. These actions enter through the whole, and because of this, it must be a disposition of the nature of the quality of all bodies, and not of the action.

For if a medicinal body is not well-tempered, it would entirely cease to change imperfect bodies toward that perfection which is completed with the due projection projection: the final stage of the alchemical process where a small amount of the Elixir is "cast upon" a larger mass of molten base metal to transmute it. Indeed, it is then called a "powerful temperament" only when it is fit to complete the action given to it through the complexion of its own temperament, along with the completion given to it through the known way and mode of projection. This action renders and ordains the medicine fit and capable through its own temperament. To the knowledge of this, the intention of the one who knows our work ought principally to be aimed and directed.