Friedrichstadt Leisure or the Chemical Tantalus

embracing this matter. Nature the light kindles a light in Cimmerian darkness, so that he may choose the matter that is shining, resplendent, and striking the eyes like the sun. Nature is also a companion. She cries out: pressing with your foot and insisting on my footsteps, follow me, your companion and partner, and beware that you do not deflect onto a crossroads, nor let the will-o'-the-wisp of phrenetic philosophy seduce you.

§. 5. This divine Labor shows ocularly that the statement of Hermes Trismegistus is true, nay, most true: That which is above is the same as that which is below. Although the matter ascending upward is water, yet that earth, which remains black and dark in the bottom like an Ethiopian, fosters an intrinsic magnetism and as if deplores its separation from it and sends down drops with light motion like tears, which the earth also imbibes just like a thirsty stag, and units most tightly to itself; and it is compared with these two apparently different things not otherwise than with a bird, which flies upward from its eggs, but by the instinct of nature returns to its eggs, and thus that which ascends upward, by the instinct of nature or the archaeus formative force, returns to the homogeneous matter. And such as the homogeneous identity is between a bird and its eggs, such is the consanguineous homogeneity between that which flies upward and that which remains at the bottom as silt.

§. 6. And thus this divine Labor commands that one should choose no other matter than that which is homogeneous to the marrow, and which is absolutely devoid of all heterogeneity. The student of Chrysopæa gold-making will attend to this property of matter most of all. Let him choose such a subject for his work of the L. P. that is homogeneous according to its internal and external context, if not by Nature, let him make it so by art by cleansing and purging, which cleansing and purging consist in removing heterogeneous particles, which either Nature or the imposture of men mixes in. Besides the Adepti, the writings of common Chemicorum alchemists also teach the cleansing and method of cleansing of each subject. And although they anxiously prescribe the purging of those two subjects, yet they have their mind veiled by the darkness of prejudices, so that although they diligently and with great study apply themselves to the purging of these subjects, they nevertheless are ignorant of the sublime and mystical use of those two objects. Basilius Valentinus, that dweller of a monastery, in his prima Clavi first Key, hands down the purging of one subject and demonstrates it through an image symbolically and sufficiently neatly. In short: the purging of each subject is done by the benefit of salt, so that salt may be first in the work, and salt may be the last in the finished work. Without salt [it] does not