Manuscript Transmitted to the Serene Duke of Holstein Explaining the Obscure Matters of Alchemists

):( 0 ):( 7

of the same nature as those below. For animals and vegetables, which are on the surface of the Earth, and are truly superior, have a seed from which they grow. Therefore, the inferior things, which are minerals and metals, which grow in the depths of the Earth, also have a seed, just like the superior ones, namely animals and vegetables. Therefore, it is not to be denied that metals and minerals have a seed from which they are made and grow. But what that seed is, and in what manner it is made in the nature of things, must now be investigated. For animal and vegetable seed is made from the elements and the heavens: so also mineral and metallic seed is made from the elements and the heavens, in the following way: The heavens, with their rays and influences—which are most pure within them—project into the elements and especially into the center of the Earth. From there it is digested and cooked by the natural central heat of the Earth itself, and by itself, until that most pure part of the heavens and all elements becomes a body, and this body becomes a spirit; so that this substance passes first into a body from a spirit, and this body again into a Spirit, which, by frequent union and conjunction with its body, at length becomes a Spiritual substance, having a corporeal part that is fixed, which is called by the Philosophers the Sulphur of nature, which at length, enclosed in the veins of the mountains by its own fixed center, is fixed into metal: And if it is pure, it turns into pure gold; if impure, it passes into an imperfect metal, and according to its varied and distinct impurity, there are varied and distinct impure metals. And this is the true metallic seed, compounded from Celestial influence and the purest substances of the elements, which, while it is sublimated and circulated through the pores of the Earth, is infused with varied pollution; since it finds impurity in the impure and tainted pores of the Earth, from which impurity, as I have said, various imperfect metals are born; such as lead, tin, quicksilver, iron, and copper. If, however, this pure seed is enclosed in pure rocks, it is cooked by its own natural heat, and the natural heat of the Earth itself, into ☉ Gold/Sun and ☽ Silver/Moon. This metallic seed, therefore, is the center in the matrices of metals, that is, the places where metals are generated, that is, truly the Philosophers' Stone.