ON THE ELEMENTS.

CHAPTER II.

How fire acts upon water and earth: how opposites are united: that the separation separation (secretio): The alchemical process of isolating the pure essence of an element from its raw form. of the Elements must be carefully observed: that Fire is the life of all things.

Moreover, in no different a manner than it acts upon the air, Fire also acts upon Water and Earth. We see this in dry sods original: "cespitibus exsuccis." These are blocks of dried peat or turf used as fuel. and seasoned wood; which, no less than the air, become illuminated and splendid. Do you not see how black the coals are outside the fire? Yet how bright and glowing they become within the fire, appearing no less radiant than the fire itself. Fire imparts so much brilliance to them that they are even transformed into a completely different form: yet afterwards they return to their original nature.

Even the ash itself does not refuse, at last, to be changed into a substance not unlike glass This refers to the process of vitrification, where minerals in wood ash melt under extreme heat to form a glassy slag—a phenomenon well known to early chemists and glassmakers., and finally into an invisible substance. Perhaps you might say it is impossible for water to have originated from the same matter as fire: for it is necessary that things which are so related must have received some similarity with...