The Most Secret Rosary of the Philosophers

of the Elixir the transformative agent, without which it is in no way accomplished: it gladdens the soul, preserves youth, renews old age, and repels every sickness of the body. For it is like leaven to dough, and rennet to milk to make it cheese, and like musk in good aromatics. Deservedly, therefore, does gold surround the upper solar part, and silver the lower lunar part: from which, if I did not see the Sun and the Moon, I would for certain say that the magisterium the Great Work was not true. But because I see the Sun and the Moon, I know most certainly that the magisterium is true. For any thing increases its own like, and these are all homogeneous to vegetables in nature, wherefore their increase must be as that of vegetables. Furthermore, the Sun is the tinctura rubedinis tincture of redness, which transforms every body; the Moon, however, since it is the mistress of humidity, is the tinctura albedinis tincture of whiteness. Yet with the sun, spirits are mixed and fixed by it through the greatest ingenuity, which does not reach the artist of a stiff neck a biblical idiom for the stubborn or arrogant.. For the spirit, once converted into its own nature, dies and appears dead; then, afterwards, it is inspired and lives, grows, and multiplies like