is the innate heat of the Mercurius, never separable from it, by which alone the Mercurius acquires maturity and perfection, and is transmuted into gold.

CAPUT X.

All the ancient Chemists made no mention of the Salt of the Philosophers, by whose aid and help the Mercurius and Sulphur of the Philosophers are perfected into the Elixir. The reason, however, by which they were moved to such silence is perhaps that they did not want to reveal the key of the art. For our Salt is the true key of the art, and without it neither Sulphur nor Mercurius can be brought to light. For the Salt itself hides and obscures them, and holds them captive, as if in a prison, so that they may not go forth. Whence Sendivogius, in his Treatise on Sulphur, asserts that Salt and Sulphur quarrel among themselves in a fountain, or around a very clear and limpid fountain, and battle so much that the Sulphur is wounded by the Salt in the fountain, from whose wounds blood did not exit, as it should have, but pure milk, which in the Receiver is coagulated into butter, the foundation of our entire work, as Sendivogius demonstrates most clearly in that Treatise on Sulphur, asserting that that milk, or butter, has grown into a great river, in which Diana herself was submerged, and the Sun, wishing to save Diana herself from shipwreck, pulled Diana, and both were submerged in such a river, and remained there until they rose from the dead. All of which indicates the Stone made from it to those having eyes of a Lynx. Therefore, the Salt of the Philosophers, which is sought in this chapter, is the absolute key of the art, and is that Salt which contains and encloses within itself the entire Heaven, the Sun, and the Moon, and all the stars and elements, and together with Mercurius and Sulphur is coerced into one and the same body. For that which forms the body in Mercurius and Sulphur, or in the moist and hot