Chemical-Philosophical Treatise on Natural and Supernatural Things

of the three principles, and that which acquires the greatest part for itself from these three, thus the body is also produced. If the spirit of Mercury is borne from above to animals, the animal nature results from it; if it tends toward vegetables by its concession, a vegetable thing arises; but if its infused nature is inclined toward minerals, minerals and metals are born from it, yet each with its own distinction, according to how they are worked. Animals by themselves, vegetables by another reason and form by themselves, minerals likewise by themselves, each in its own singular way, concerning all of which much could be written in specific detail and many things could be delivered separately.

Here someone will perhaps not unjustly ask how such a spirit of Mercury is to be obtained or worked, by what reason and way it is to be prepared, so that it might put diseases to flight and, in the microcosm, alter all kinds of lower metals as if they were being generated, through the transmutation and augmentation of the seed. Perhaps not a few will avidly await the answer to this question, which I will not hide from them, but will faithfully teach, as much as has indeed been permitted to me by divine command and judgment, in this way: R. In the name of the Lord, take red mercury original: "rubeum hydrargyrum", reflecting the color of cinnabar, with the best gold, of which you will have an abundance; grind these together artfully before they have experienced the fire; pour over them the oil of Mercury, prepared by itself from common, purified, and sublimated mercury; place it to digest for one month, thus you will possess an extraction more celestial than terrestrial. Distil this slowly in a Balneo Mariæ water bath, and the phlegms will come out, with the heavy oil left behind at the bottom, which [acts upon] all metals in a moment