Fridrichstadt Leisure, or the Chemical Tantalus

is to be treated by its cultivators, from a more ignoble state to a nobler one by the benefit of fire, which represents the grinding of the second mill, so that it may be transmuted into a nobler and, in many ways, more elegant substance. Let those who cannot promise themselves this regarding the treatment of the matter withdraw their hand from the board A classic metaphor for abandoning a task..

§. 11. This sacred work encourages the student of Chrysopoeia the art of gold-making/alchemy to select the material for composing this L. P. Lapis Philosophorum, or Philosopher's Stone just as nature itself presents it, to avoid all detours and complications, and to cleanse it well, so that everything heterogeneous is banished from it. Two things are required for the preparation of this material. The ancient philosophers express the first by this symbol: Under the cross and the sphere lies true wisdom: The second: It can be symbolically called the Sun and the Salt of the nations. These two are required for the radical and full cleansing of the philosophical matter, since the elaboration of the L. P. is primarily the blessing of nature by the merciful God, not the work of human art or industry. The artist behaves no differently than a midwife helping an infant to be born, so let us follow the lead of nature most simply, as the work primarily demands. Let those things that should be joined be joined, and when joined, let them be cooked, and in their own time ground, for grinding is the cause without which nothing can be done. Grinding is the first principle and the ultimate complement in the work as well. By the first grinding, the slaughter and tearing of the matter into atoms must be understood: the second grinding is the work of Vulcan: the third, however, is performed with a pestle. It is said: let things that should be joined, be joined. Here, however, the student of Chrysopoeia will be mindful that God created all things in weight, number, and measure. If this saying is neglected, one will plow the air and wash the Ethiopian.

§. 12. This sacred work selects a material which, although it does not appear to be vegetable, nevertheless pushes forth a beautiful and shapely grove in that philosophical cooking, which provides a most pleasant spectacle to philosophers. This germination of the grove is the effect of the hermaphroditic matter, which shows that it conceals within itself and to its marrow a vegetable force or archeus the vital, formative principle. When one contemplates this matter, no one will persuade himself that such a germinating faculty exists in it. The Peripatetics, along with other philosophers, decree that this matter is devoid of any soul; truly, when we salute this philosophical matter as animated, our meaning is that it partakes of the soul or the world-archeus, which diffuses itself through all kingdoms according to the disposition of each kingdom or family.

And thus