Chemical-Philosophical Treatise on Natural and Supernatural Things

Now as to how the Archæus proceeds in its operation by the benefit of the spirit of Mercury in the earth or its bowels, understand that as soon as the spiritual seed has been conceived by the celestial impression of the stars and nourished through the elements, this sperm is immediately born and turned into Mercurial water, just as in the beginning also the Macrocosm was created from nothing. For the spirit was borne over the waters; a certain celestial heat was bound to animate the cold, watery, earthly creature. In the macrocosm, the divine virtue and the operation of the celestial luminaries reigned; in the microcosm, likewise, the supreme virtue and power will sustain the regimen of working in the earth by the benefit of its most divine and holy spirit. Furthermore, the Omnipotent established the means of perfecting all those things, so that one creature might receive the faculty of influencing another, and one might promote another in the works of the perfecting Lord. Thus, a certain influence was granted to the earth through the luminaries of heaven for generating, and likewise an internal heat for fostering and cooking, which the excessive cold of the earth asserted due to its wateriness. To every creature, according to its species, a singular kind was granted, so that by that reason a certain subtle exhalation might be drawn out through the starry heaven, not that common one, but a clarified and pure vapor, separated from others, which joins itself with the Mercurial substance. By the property of this heat, the humidity is so evidently dried over a long time. When, however, the animal property approaches, which exhibits the body and the balsam for preservation, and before it reaches the earth through the spiritual and stellar influx, the generation of metals arises therefrom, just as the mixture