The Assembly of the Philosophers

to more, is not able to finish such perfection; furthermore, to [attempt to] make gold and silver This refers to trying to transmute metals prematurely before the Stone is fully perfected, which was considered a common error. is an enemy to this work. From this, the period of nine months is especially excluded; rather, it is gathered that the stone must be completed in its final perfection within one hundred days, up to and including the time of multiplication multiplication: the final stage of the Great Work where the potency and quantity of the Philosophers' Stone are increased through repeated heating.

3.3

Proposition X.

Everything that, in the first six days, when melted over a proper fire in the physical vessel physical vessel: the "vas philosophicum" or Hermetic egg, a specially prepared glass container used to hold the alchemical matter within its necessary furnace, does not appear saffron-yellow original: "croceum"; and in the next six days, red original: "rubeum"; and in the subsequent days, white with a perfect whiteness; and in the concluding thirty days, most intensely red with a perfect redness original: "rubedine perfecta"—this thing is not intended for this work. From this is especially drawn the method of operation: namely, that the physical stone must be placed in a glass vessel closed inviolably meaning hermetically sealed, so no spirits or vapors can escape in a physical furnace, and it must be melted over a slow fire, and in that melting it must be held at a uniform fire for the space