Manly P. Hall Collection, Box 3

the water has boiled away and the salt settles at the bottom, remove it with a spatula to a clean basin. Continue until you have removed all the salt from the clay pot. Afterward, place the basin over slow coals and stir. Do not allow it to burn, and stir until the whole salt is powdery and no humidity remains. Thus, you will have the entire preparation and purification of our mercury, which is taught with such difficulty by many, and which you will find scattered in Geber and others, but which is truly opened in the recently opened and unlocked Tomb of Semiramis.

Chapter II

Of the Preparation of our Sulfur

Here begins the making of our sulfur. Even the most learned men know nothing of this, let alone the sophists who work in alchemy, for it is a great secret. Unless it is simply directed by the hand of God or by the hand of a friend, no philosopher can accomplish anything just with it. For it alone is what fixes all things in alchemy and in the earth. Although that sulfur is mostly present in every metal, especially in gold itself, it is nevertheless difficult to extract it from them, since it is intrinsically connected to the mercury of those metals by the smallest parts. Therefore, take the same material into which the Archaeus of the universe the vital force of nature expelled that sulfur from its center as an agent, but did not find mercury with which it could join, for it is naked there and easily extracted.

Therefore, take in the name of the Most High the striated pyrites. I dare to say to you that among all philosophers, striated pyrites are the marcasite of gold itself. Many are misled here, thinking they must take the ore of gold itself. Wash them cleanly in water, dry them, and place them into goldsmiths' crucibles...