OPERIS MINERALIS

On the contrary, the further away a thing is, the viler and more abject it is in the aforementioned matters; for present things are always more notable than absent ones; the closer the visible is, the more remote is the invisible. Therefore, it must be your concern, O Alchemist, how you may take Jupiter and place it into the spiritual, arcane, and remote place in which the Sun and Moon are, and take the Sun or the Moon, whichever you prefer, from afar and place it nearby in the place where Jupiter was corporeally, so that the Sun and Moon also may be corporeally present before the eyes and truly in the test. For there are various modes and labors for transmuting metals from their imperfection into perfection.

To mix one with another, and again to separate one from another, pure and sincere, is nothing other than mutation made by the genuine labor of alchemy. Note: Jupiter has much gold, and not pure silver. Impose Saturn and the Moon upon it, and the Moon will be increased from the rest.

Even if we do not exactly hold the true reason why Paracelsus, having made a beginning concerning Mercury, moves to Jupiter, it is nevertheless likely that a singular mystery, by which he wished to intimate something, underlies it.

He repeats the prior sentiment here, saying that every visible metal is a hider of the remaining invisible ones, from which, if we wish to fashion any good, the invisible and spiritual Gold of them must be taken and placed into the nearby or visibility, while on the contrary, the visible must be placed far away and made invisible. By what