The 9th Chapter.

she lives, grows, and reproduces again with the outflow of her seed in the warm womb of the Body-Salt or the Universal Vitriol. The author uses "she" to refer to the "Earth" or "Matter" mentioned on the previous page. However, as has been said, through the kind and gentle labor of the artist—while retaining her former full power [only that her essence is thicker and she can no longer work as penetratingly as she could before she became a slimy water, until the separation has happened and she is born again, at which point she works with the gold in a completely golden manner]—she becomes Earth, and is the nearest true Matter of the Sages and the mineral of our Mercury and Vitriol.

CHAPTER IX.

Concerning the

World-Slime or our True Matter.

Chapter IX. Concerning the World- Slime I call the World-Slime sometimes "corrupt," because the matter from which it sprang became lowly and turned to slime through Lucifer’s fall; and sometimes "magnificent," because the Idea of this entire world lies hidden within it. Where there is slime, there is also fat; where there is fat, there is also salt.

By the term World-Slime, I understand not only the primordial substance original: "Uhrwesen" from which Heaven and Earth and everything within them were made; but also the matter for the metallic Masterpiece, The "Masterpiece" refers to the Philosophers' Stone. because it is entirely identical to that primordial substance. The beginning and end of all things is a slime or slimy water, thick or thin, depending on how much or how little it participates in the nature of the earth,

Concerning the World-Slime.

C 5

breathes, original: "erpiret," likely an archaic shortening of "respiret" (respired/breathed). as can be read in detail in the treatise Centrum concentratum; and because the World-Slime as a primordial substance is also thought of so much and so often in the second chapter, and is sufficiently explained through circumstances, I will herein describe the World-Slime as our Matter.

Our World-Slime, although it is everything in one—Air, Water, and Earth at the same time—is nevertheless good for our Masterpiece, and indeed solely because of its Salt, which comes from the Air and from Man, and consists of Mercury and Vitriol. The Mercury is of a thinning and partitioning quality because of the Light-Spirit dwelling within it; and wherever it rules over the Vitriol in a subject original: "subjecto" according to its proportion, that same subject is dissolved and reduced. The Vitriol, however, has a contracting power, still from the first fall of the primordial substance as the Devil, A reference to the theological-alchemical idea that the "heaviness" and "density" of matter is a result of the Fall of Lucifer. when the Light became Darkness. Such an astringent quality—which before the creation was highly harmful to the primordial substance and contracted and thickened everything more and more—is, after the creation of the New Light (which rules through the Spirit in the Salt or Mercury and is the thinning and all-partitioning force), highly necessary to the present world and its affairs. For through it, when the Air has captured its Salt-Spirit or Mercury, all creatures emerge, grow, and re-