Friedrichstadt Leisure or the Chemical Tantalus

the Volume of the Curious Ephemerides, which contains Century V & VI, I read, and which I observed communicated by the most Excellent Godofredus Heldius in Century VI, Observation LXXXVII, p. 365, in which observation there are also brought forward the opinions of great men concerning the Doves of Diana, which opinions are so frivolous that one might deservedly receive them with laughter. Hermes Trismegistus expresses the Doves of Diana in his Emerald Tablet through this axiom of his: what is above is the same as what is below; enough said to the wise. I do not wonder that mercury was extracted from Vitriol, although it is a rare experiment. Agricola provides a fulcrum to this assertion in Poppius, who tells of a certain goldsmith who elicited gold from Vitriol. See, if you will, our Xistus, Chapter II, § 2, p. 14. It is not a wonder that the metallic aura sometimes mixes itself with the aura of minerals, not otherwise than as the aura of gold mixes itself with vines and grapes, and makes little stones in the grapes golden. From this experiment, it is not immediately to be concluded: Therefore it is the matter of the L. P. B. For it is not yet established by the faith of experience that gold, as gold, is the matter of the L. P. B. For the Adepts have their own peculiar gold.* I will adhere to examining the opinion of this most learned man; he says oil of Vitriol must be poured into the fixed salt of Vitriol and then simultaneously coagulated. The spirit and oil of Vitriol have an essential identity, they differ only in color, the latter is white and limpid; the former is toward reddish, therefore it is whatever you take. The oil, just as the spirit, are volatile in the fire; whatever is mixed here with the fixed salt, from the mixture of both arises a monster that lacks all the properties of the L. P. B.: this will be 1) fusible, so that it flows like wax. 2) Have ingress into the marrow of the ignobler metal, that it may purge it from its leprosy. 3) Procure a reddish golden color to quicksilver, fix it, and induce to lead, tin, and silver a softness adequate and homogeneous to gold, or make silver from those metals toward white. 4) One grain of the L. P. B. may tinge several pounds of ignobler metal; who can promise these things to himself about this monster? 5) No fixed salt of Vitriol can acquire any metallic flux in the fire. 6) The fixed salt of Vitriol is an alkali, which in no third thing agrees with metals. 7) The oil of Vitriol is also entirely alien to the metallic nature and differs from metals as water from wine. 8) How will the oil of Vitriol be coagulated with the fixed salt? If this happens, then by the benefit of Palingenesis rebirth/regeneration a new offspring of Vitriol is made. 9) Whence do they elicit this fixed salt? From colcothar; this salt has no use either in Alchemy or in Medicine, unless other ingredients are added.