through his Studies to his crown'd haven with which desire I conclude â—2 Decemb. 1656. R. T. To the Reader THis little Treatise Secrets doth unfold More rich more precious then the Indian Gold Here is the path which who doth rightly tread To health wealth it will him safely lead Salt seasoning all things Light illuminating The universal Spirit vivificating O happy Souls who first these understood Here 's true Philosophy so pure and good And free'd from errors that none need to doubt If they were in them this would bring them out By Transmutation may be brought to pass The courser Metals be they Copper Brass Iron Lead Tin to purer this is high But 't is not all that 's done by Chymistry For the Elixir which renews our youth And age retards if Spagyricks say truth Is thereby got if these things may be done Lets Saturn Venus turn to Sun Moon Th' effeminate French our Author hath turn'd well To manly English and the Latin Spell Is made so easie that none need to fear To understand th' Aenigma's writing there The busie Merchants for their hoped gain To both the Indies Turky France and Spain Nay all the world for Gold and Drugs do rome Now here now there but better stay at home For health and wealth is here if they 'll but look They 'll finde them both discover'd in this Book 25 Xbris 1656. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To his ingenious Friend Mr. ROBERT TURNER on this his laborious and difficult Translation EXpect not Sir that I should amply treat Of this Discourse that cost you pains and sweat Nor hope for yet from my more duller pen Your Sal should be describ'd to Englishmen The sublime secrets of your Chymick-skill May prosper better from your learned quill My fancy 's raw my brain is not endu'd With Art enough to talk of humours crude Nor yet of th' Epilepsie or the Gout Consumption Asthma's or the rabble-rout Of Physick-Terms I study other things Ergo I 'll leave these unto Chymist-Kings These high-born Fancies do appear to me Like great Sir Urquhart's Genealogy Nor dare I without Sendivogius Torch Approximate you neerer then the Porch Lest I presumptuous should be gaz'd upon By those that have their wedding-Garments on But as man oft feels heat and sees no fire So I unskil'd this learned Work admire The learn'd Physitians who yeers consume In finding out a Medicine for the Rheume And when they think themselves to be at rest They dare not write on it probatum est May learn by this could they but finde the cause To cure diseases by the Chymists Laws Nor need th' ingenious Operator doubt Of perfecting what ere he goes about The lofty Secrets in this Book laid down Once understood will save him many a Crown There is a Secret higher yet in this For here is taught what anima mundi is For which the Learned oft have beat their brains And gained nought but labour for their pains If men would learn this quicker way share In Chymick-skill deal in learn'd Turner's Ware Jo. Gadbury Philomath To the learned R. T. on the following Tract WHat rare Discovery what light is this Shines to us by thy Metamorphosis That doth derive an Art to simple man From God and Nature by which Art he can Of all diseases know the perfect ground And render imperfections whole and sound Thanks therefore learned Friend for this our gain Who reap the Harvest of thy polish'd Brain The Great Elixir sure enjoy you must That thus can raise a subject from the dust Of dark oblivion and then transmute His for vesture to an English sute Thus thou hast chang'd the language ne'retheless The sense remains though in another dress This thou hast gain'd hereby the world will see Thou art a friend to dame Philosophy And for the labor thou hast undergone To cloath this Infant in our Albion Succeeding times shall praise what thou hast writ And future Readers own to thee their wit Mean time if Zoilus say thy pen did halt Conclude his brain 's not season'd with our Salt Your humble Servant Owen Crane The Contents BOOK I. Chap. 1 THat the world lives and is full of life Page 1 Chap. 2 The World hath a Spirit Soul and Body Page 16 Chap. 3 All things are made by the Spirit of the World of the first matter Page 19 Chap. 4 How the Sun is called Father of the mundane Spirit and first matter Page 23 Chap. 5 How the Moon is the Mother c. Page 32 Chap. 6 That the root of the Spirit of the World must be sought in the Air. Page 37 Chap. 7 How the Earth nourishes this universal Spirit Page 41 Chap. 8 The Spirit of the World is the cause of perfection in all Page 44 Chap. 9 The specification of the universal Spirit to bodys Page 49 BOOK 2. Chap. 1 THat the spirit of the world assumes a Body and how it is incorporated Page 54 Chap. 2 Of the conversion of the Spirit into Earth and how its vertue remains integrally in this Earth Page 67 Chap. 3 Of the separation of Fire from Water c. Page 102 Chap. 4 Of the Spirits ascent into heaven and descent c. Page 160 A TREATISE OF The Philosophers true Salt and Secret And Of the universal Soul or Spirit of the World BOOK I. CHAP. 1. That the World lives and is full of life PUrposing to comment something on the Spirit of the World I shall first demonstrate That the Universe is full of Life and Soul and here besides That Nature makes nothing Spirituous but it also indues it with Life and That the World consists in continual and restless alterations of forms which cannot be without vital motion We may also take notice That the same Nature like a careful as well as a fruitful Mother embraces and nourisheth the whole World by distributing to each member a sufficient portion of Life so that nothing occurs in the whole Universe which she desires not to inform being never idle but alwayes intent upon her action which is Vivification This vast Body then is indued with motion yea continually agitated therewith and this motion cannot be wrought without some vital Spirit for whatsoever wants Life is immoveable But here I mean not of violent motion from place to place but of that which in reference to a form is privation to perfection imperfection The vegetation of Plants and concretion of Stones are effected by the motion of this universal Spirit agitating this great Mass and the mediation of a certain radical and nutritive Spirit whose origine or principle like some primary procreating cause resides in the Centre of the Earth and thence as from the heart exerts all vital functions and extends it self through the whole Body And this root or principle is included in the bosome of the ancient Demogorgon that universal Parent whom old Poets those diligent Searchers of Natures Secrets have ingeniously described clothed in a green
where Glass is the cause of hardness Salt affords matter and Water causes unition and condensation CHAP. 9. Of the specification of the Universal Spirit to Bodies THe Soul of the World and its Action and Vertue is represented in all things in which it is this bindes and conjoyns the superiour things with the inferiour for as many Idea's as the Heaven contains so many seminal causes it obtains whence by the Mediation of the Spirit it forms so many species in the matter When therefore it falls out that any one of these species degenerate it may by the Soul within it and the mediation of the universal Spirit be reformed and reduced to its former state for the Spirit is alwayes at hand and ready for all motions In the mean while we must not imagine that the intellectual Idea is attracted but rather that the Soul is indued with such a vertue and allured by the material forms which cannot seem absurd to any one for it prepares every one his meat and nutriment because it is transmutable into all things by which it is sollicited and willingly remains and resides therein Zoroaster calls the Agreement and Harmony of the Forms with the Soul of the World Allurements Whence it appears That all things and kindes draw their powers and faculties from the Soul of the World not all totally but such as respect the seed or propagation and the like whereby they germinate or encrease An example hereof we have in Man who feeding onely on Man's meat acquires not the Nature of Birds Fishes or the like which he eats Many other Animals also feed upon the same victuals and yet every one attracts that which is proper to his species so that it is worthy our admiration that out of the same Meat Man can attract what is proper to Man and a Bird what is proper to a Bird. And this is not because there are many and diverse Aliments in one and the same dish but because of the species nourished which attracts and changes the nutriment proper to and convenient for it self by mediation whereof it generates its like by vertue of this Soul and seed which is in it according to its quality But we must not think That in the Machine of the Worid the Spirit Soul and Body are things separated for these three are alwayes united and conjoyned as is apparent and by this union the whole Spirit and corporal substance become vital The universal Soul then feigns and imagines divers forms which the Spirit receiving into the bowels of the Elements makes corporeal and produces Hence Animals generate onely Animals Plants Plants and Minerals Minerals though not all alike for Minerals as I said before generate not their like after the same manner as Plants because their Spirit is cohibited by too gross matter which Spirit if it could be conveniently extracted and conjoyned with Mineral matterâ— would generate its like because by its exquisite penetration into imperfect Bodies through the subtiliation of Art and artificious Graduation of Fire it brings with it proper and Mineral seeds onely not animal because repugnant to its Nature yet I will not say That it wants the action of other faculties but that it doth not demonstrate them but according to the species whereto it is accommodated for else every thing would produce its unlike a Tree would generate a Man a Plant a Bull a Metal an Herb which I speak onely in respect of the diverse specifications of things For if we consider the most general Genus it produces in all things its like because being Mercury it assumes the Nature of all things wherewith it is mixed But humane Art cannot effect that that is solely granted to Nature which alone can procreate a species Art may dilate and multiply it if it begin its operation at the root of the species as prudent Philosophers do who extracting the Spirit from Minerals specificated decently purified and reduced to perfection render it apt to perfect imperfect things And an expert and industrious Artist perpending these things aright may easily institute admirable Adaptations Finis Libri primi A TREATISE OF The Philosophers true Salt and Secret And Of the universal Soul or Spirit of the World BOOK II. CHAP. 1. That the Spirit of the World assumes a Body and how it is incorporated WE have I hope sufficiently explicated in the former Book that all things were not only produced but also made corporeal by the universal Spirit We now come to declare what kinde of Body this Spirit assumes and how it self both is and makes all things corporeal for that must needs be corporeal which makes all other things such seeing nothing can give what it self hath not Let us therefore see with what and how it is vested with a Body not that we will here dispute of the incorporation of celestial and supernatural beings but onely of Physical and Sublunary Generations and of the body of the Earth which is the sole vessel and true matrix where the prime and most general Incorporator of things is it self incorporated I say then That no body can be made without a precedent Mover that may diduce potency to act that which exists not in save potency may be produced into light and according to Natures intent reach its final term which is to make that a body which it would produce Now this mover can be no other then fire or heat which moves it self first in the Air for all Generations begin there because fire is the most active Element and consequently most subtile and light whence it is more prompt for motion Fire therefore whose propriety is through its levity to ascend and make unknown things visible doth requisitely receive the beginning of its motion and action from inferiour Bodies that is from the centre of the Earth where as we said before the old Demogorgon and Progenitor of all things inhabits sitting there in his Throne and midst of his Empire that thence he may govern command preserve and divide the essence of Life to all the parts of that great Spherical Body expanded about him and that he may more easily and from equal distance receive from every Member what he wants The root of Fire is implanted in the fruitful bowels of this old Parent which thence emits a vaporous breath which Hermes calls the humid Nature for vapour is the prime and next action of fire with which it is so conjoyned that it cannot be imagined without it But some may say If vapour comes from fire how can it be moist seeing fire is hot and dry whence acquires it this contrary quality And here we finde nothing absurd if we do but consider That fire cannot live and subsist without moisture which is its aliment support and subject without which fire cannot be conceived for being by Nature active and its action indefatigable it must needs have something to act upon and never be destitute of this thing Fire then and co-essential moisture are like
of Excrements Again How do Oysters Sea-Spunges and other Aquatical Creatures live which rather merit the name of Plant-animals then of Fishes These do not so much live by any particular Life proper to themselves as by that Universal one general and common to all which is more vigorous in subtile Bodies as more neer to it then in grosser ones which are more remote from it The World then created wholly good by him that is Goodness it self is not corporal solely but participates of spirituality and intelligence for it is full of all manner of forms and as I said before hath neither part nor member but that 's vital and therefore wise-men have called it a Masculine and Feminine or Hermaphroditical Animal one part holding a certain Matrimonial Alligation with another And hence by a certain Translation arises the diversity of Sexes in Plants and Animals which in imitation of the World copulate together and generate a third like themselves for the World produces an infinity of little Worlds for every Body in the World that is generated is a Microcosm having distinct parts vertues and qualities belonging to a little World So that every thing hath an inclination to generate a thing like it self by the right ordering of Action and Passion which could not be if all things were not full of Life for what Generation can proceed from a dead subject seeing it is neither probable nor possible that that can communicate Life to another that wants Life it self We see indeed sometimes many things are generated without the congress of Male and Female yea without the production of either whereinto the Universal Spirit infuses Life by means of Fomentation as many by Artifice who exclude Eggs and Chickins without the sitting of a Hen and others who by preparing certain matters and putrefying them produce wonderful Animals as the Basilisk of a Cocks Egg or of the menstruous matter of a red Hen Scorpions of the Herb Bees of Neats bowels a kinde of Ducks of the Leaves of a certain Tree falling into the Sea a with many things of the like Nature that merit admiration rather then credit because they are made out of the ordinary course of Nature certain matters in certain seasons and places attracting Life from the Universal Spirit wherewith the World so abounds that all its actions are vital insomuch that nothing dies perishes or ceases from action and consequently from Life but immediately some other living thing results out of it and upon this account no Body perishes or is totally annihilated for if it should all the parts of the World would by little and little vanish one after another before our eyes especially considering how many mutations and Ages have gone before us insomuch that he that perpends might admire that there are any reliques left in Nature at this time which a French Poet and no little conversant in this secret Philosophy hints at to his Friend thus Vostre aspect inegal qui mea fortune change Est comme le soliel contraire en ses effects Qui amollit la cire indurcit la fange Et fait des corps nouveaux de ceux qu'il a defaicts Your aspect in my fortunes changes sways As Phoebus in his effects whose bright rays Waxes do mollifie but harden Clayes And from corruption do sound bodies raise a Our Author seems here to embrace the vulgar Opinion of the Generation of the Northern Ducks which the Scots call Claikis Claiks or Claik-geese and the English Bernacles which many other Writers say are generated of the Nuts of a certain Maritimous Tree falling into the prolifical Sea or of some Shells adhering to putrid pieces of Ships which thing the learned Lobellius makes mention of in Advers Stirp pag. 456. where first he seems to assent to afterwards to doubt of and last to conclude That Fabius Columna had justly refuted this Opinion Lobellius in the second part of his Work pag. 259. describes the figure of this Duck or Goose as also of the Tree and Shells Olaus Magnus also mentions this kinde of Ducks Lib. 19. Hist. Sextent cap. 9. But Carolus Clusius seems to have explained the generation of them more rationally Canctario Exoticorum pag. 368. where he sayes That the Hollanders sayling towards Waygatz saw some of these Ducks sitting upon their Eggs. Fabius Columna repeats his words but Ulysses Aldronaldus Lib. 19. Antithog cap. 23. towards the end embraceth the middle sentence saying He had rather erre with the multitude then contradict so many famous writers and therefore he sayes These Ducks may be generated of corruption and afterwards multiply by copulation and incubation like Mice and other Animals The generation of Palmer-worms from Plants may also be well referred to this place which whether they be generated naturally or artificially feed onely upon the Herb whereof they are generated or to which they are related as also the Generation of Caterpillars and then of Butterflies which afterwards multiply their species by copulation I saw at Rome in Henricus Corvinus an eximious Apothechary and Botanist his Shop a Butterflie which they said was made of the corruption of Cypress-Leaves so elegant and great that its Wings equalized my little Finger in length and were all over as it were eyed whereof as of the Palmer-Worm you may read Fabius Columna his Observations Part 2. Stirp minus Cog. pag. 85. CHAP. 2. That the World because it lives hath a Spirit a Soul and a Body THe Body of the World lies open to our senses but its Spirit lies hid and in the Spirit its Soul which cannot be united to its Body but by the mediation of its Spirit for the Body is gross and the Soul subtil far removed from all corporal qualities For the unition then of these two we must finde some third participating of both Natures which must be as it were a corporeal Spirit because the extreams cannot be conjoyned without an intervenient Ligament that hath affinity with both The Heaven we see is high the Earth low the one pure the other corrupt How then shall we exalt this impure corruption and conjoyn it with that active purity without a mean God we know is infinitely pure and clean Man exreamly impure and defiled with sins Now these could never have been conjoyned and reconciled but by the mediation of Christ Jesus God-Man that true attractive Glue of both Natures In like manner this Spirit corporeal or Body spiritual we speak of is the active Glue of Body and Soul which Soul sits in the Spirit of the World as a spark from and of God's infinite Intelligence for these effective elevations renovations mutations variations and multiplications of forms must necessarily arise from intelligence and not from matter which participates of no reason and therefore cannot cause such formations and specifications The World then is nourished by this Spirit and agitated by this Soul which is infus'd into it by mediation of this Spirit which Virgil following divine
Plato's Doctrine expresses elegantly Lib. 6. Aeneid Principio Caelum ac Terras composque liquentes Lucentemque Globum Lunae Titaniaque Astra Spiritus intus alit totamque infusa per Artus Mens agitat molem magno se corpore miscet The nourishment of th' earth mountains and skars Of th' heaven of planets of glistring stars We attribute to th' Spirit but to th' Soul That these do move stir without controul To which Augurellus also attests in his first Book saying Ast Animae quoniam nil non est corporis expers Mundus at mundi partes quoque corpore constant Spiritus haec inter medius fit quem neque corpus Aut Animam dicas sed eum qui solus utroque Participans in idem simul haec extrema reducat Hic igitur Maria ac Terras atque Aera Ignem Vivereque augerique atque in se cuncta referre Semper Aves semper Stirpes Animantia semper Gignere perpetuamque sequi per secula prolem c. But since a Soul is incorporeal And all the parts o' th' world we meet withal Are bodies these two cannot be combin'd Without a mean betwixt Body and Mind Which is a Spirit wherewith the raging seas Fire air earth all plants fruitful trees With animals are acted so that they Do generate their like and live for aye c. CHAP. 3. That all things which have Essence and Life are made by the Spirit of the World and of the first Matter ALL things are nourished by the same by which they were produced Now that all things breathe live augment and grow by this Mundane Spirit resolve and die without it is plain Whatsoever therefore subsists is made by it and this Spirit is nothing else but a simple and subtile essence which the Philosophers call a Quintessence because it may be separated from gross corporeity and the superfluities of the four Elements and so made of wonderful activity in its operations and it is now diffused over all the parts of the World and through it the Soul is dilated with all its vertues which vertues are communicated most to such Bodies as participate most of this Spirit for the Soul is infused by and transmitted from the superiour Bodies as from the Sun which acts most powerfully in this case for this Spirit being calefied by the heat of the Sun acquires abundance of Life which multiplies and enlivens the seeds of all things which thereby encrease and grow to a determinate magnitude according to the species and form of each thing upon which account Virgil saith Igneus est illis vigor caelestis origo But fiery vigour and heat celestial Are to these Bodies their original Now this Spirit is by Philosophers called Mercurius because it is of many or all forms producing all kindes of Bodies giving to some things a fairer and more lasting to others a weaker and more corruptible Life according to the pre-disposition of the matter upon which account this fiery vigour proceeding from the Solar beams is not alike in all subjects but diversified as there is more or less of it in the seeds All matters of purer pre-dispositions have a purer and more durable Life and Spirit for every thing delighting in that that 's likest to it it is more then Reason that this pure Celestial vigour should penetrate and sink deeper into purer Bodies and make them more durable and vital For the proof of which we need go no further then Gold which being purer then all other Terrestrial Bodies participates more of that Celestial Fire which penetrating the bowels of the Earth findes in Minerals the pre-disposed matter to wit the Mercury and Sulphur which Esdras calls The Earth of Gold prepared by the action and diligence of Nature and purged and separated from all inquinations of Terrestrial and adust Dregs which matter in the beginning is onely some Sperm or Water mix'd with that Sperm Powder or pure Sulphur which acted by the coagulative faculty thickens by little and little and in time by long and continued action of the heat hardens and so comes to its perfection which is naturally simple tincted with the colour of Fire for heat is the Progenitor and Parent of Tinctures If therefore it be certain that this heat comes from the Sun as it must needs be indubitable who can so much contradict Truth and Reason as to deny the Sun to be the Author and Parent of this perfection Let us then look higher and seek more accurately how this perfection may be caused by this mean CHAP. 4. How the Sun is by Hermes called The Father of the Mundane Spirit and of the Universal Matter BUt some may here say If all things proceed from one and the same matter how can the Sun be called the Parent of this matter when it self is procreated or produced out of this matter For answer whereunto we must consider That if we speak of the primaeve prejacent matter of all things it is altogether invisible and cannot be comprehended but by strong imagination out of whose vital light and natural heat this Celestial Sun was produced with equal light and fiery vigour which afterwards strengthening this internal and essential heat with natural displayed the beams of his Fire over the whole Universe illuminating the Stars above him and vivifying the things below him But because the Earth is as it were the common Mother of all things the Sun acts most vigorously upon her she being the common Receptacle of all Influences in whose bowels the seeds of all things are absconded which being agitated and moved by the Suns heat come to light and for this cause in Winter when the Sun is furthest absent from us the Earth being destituted of that vigorous heat which his perpendicular Rayes brought with them she is we see barren and produces nothing Whereas in the Spring when the Sun again reviews our Climate then she rises from her sleep or death and receives Life and vigour The cause of which mutation must needs be the Universal Spirit full of Life inhabiting the Earth principally which before it can generate any thing must take up its Inn in some Body as in the Earth which is the Body of Bodies and because all things are nourished and sustained by that which produces them there must be great affinity and harmony betwixt this Spirit and the Sun And for this cause ancient Philosophers say That the Sun in the Spring-time calefies and enlivens his Parent loaden with old age and almost killed with Winter-cold Seeing then she is by the Sun fortified enlivened and impregnated Hermes had reason to say That the Sun was the Father of this matter for being otherwise barren and without off-spring she now conceives generates and multiplies her spirituous matter leading it from incorporality to corporality The Philosopher Hortulanus commenting on Hermes his Table leaves and omits the radical principles of Nature and taking his rise by the principles of Chymistry
by the Sun understands the Philosophers Gold which he truely calls the Parent of the Philosophers Stone For all that are conversant in this Art learn from Experience and all good Authors That the true matter and subject of this Stone hath Gold and Silver in potency and Quicksilver naturally which Gold and Silver are much better then those men commonly see and handle because these are alive and can encrease the other are dead and if this could not be effected the matter would never be brought to its perfection which this Art promises which is indeed so efficacious as to perfect imperfect Metals But this same invisible Gold or Silver which by this Magistery is exalted to so sublime a degree cannot communicate its perfection to imperfect Metals without the help and service of vulgar Gold and Silver Wherefore Alchymists alway adjoyn the one or the other and so make Gold the Father of the Elixir But such as would be further informed in this verity should diligently evolve good Authors for it is not my purpose to speak more of it For it is enough for me to shew that divine Hermes with one and the same finger touches both strings or under one and the same sentence locks a twofold meaning which himself declares when he asserts That he was called Hermes Trismegistus because he possessed three parts of the Worlds knowledge for having given the Anatomy of this Universal Spirit which is the material Author and principle of all the three chief kindes comprehending the whole of the world he had attained so much of knowledge and wisdom that nothing could lie hid from his eyes and this principle he makes one So that all things are produced from one by mediation of one and adaptation to one This One then of which he speaks is that general Spirit whereof I treat and that One by which he sayes Miracles may be wrought is the true Mineral matter of the Stone whereof we spoke even now which is produced from the first general matter or universal Spirit in the Earth by Nature which Spirit potentially containing all Celestial vertues in it self communicates so much to this Mineral matter as is requisite for the obtaining of its perfection But omitting Chymical Doctrines as much as we may in this Treatise we say That this general Spirit is a Stone or Elixir composed by Nature by mediation whereof she works all her Miracles which is much more admirable then the Alchymists Stone which is onely a grant of this universal Spirit that it may act and perfect things like it self for being truely Metallical purified and compleated by Art it purifies and digests Metals left in their impurity for want of digestion But this Physical or natural Stone perpetually restores such things as are produced by Nature and hourly procreates new things as well in the kindes of Animals as of Vegetables and Minerals which yet it could not do without the help and influence of the heavenly Bodies especially of the Sun which is the origine and principle of all faculties and generations It hath then the Sun for its Father and contains in it self spiritual Gold and Silver because it is the first matter of Gold and Silver corporal And because Air is the medium through which it receives these superiour influences Hermes saith That the winde carries it in its belly for which cause Raymundus Lullius calls it Aereal Mercury but the Earth like an universal Parent nourishes it in her fruitful womb which appears by the production of all things proceeding from the Earth for if this Spirit were not included therein she would have no power nor vertue in generation and production seeing she is properly no more then the common vessel or matrix of these many and different generations for the general matter or Mercury of them being as Philosophers denote invisible and almost incorporeal cannot be made visible and corporeal but by some subtile artifice which matter if it can be extracted out of the Arms of its Nurse and purged from all accidental superfluities may notwithstanding any Reason I can see to the contrary in the things whereto it is applied separate things corruptive and heterogeneous and conserve and multiply things homogeneous and conformable to it It is without doubt That Authors are misunderstood when they seem to assert that Metals onely should be usurped to the production of Metals saying That the Seeds of Gold are in Gold for besides that which we have spoken of common Metals and of those which Philosophers assume to the confection of their Magistery we dare yet affirm That without this general Spirit which is in all things the sole cause of vegetation the faculty innate in all Metals of becoming Gold and Silver can never be deduced to vegetation or from potency to act because Nature produces not it self but in every operation there must be some agent and some matter subjacent to the action And this doubless is that fire which Pontanus speaks of which all Philosophers have concealed and kept under Lock and Key as the sole Stearn of their actions for want of which Fire Pontanus as himself confesses erred two hundred times in his practise though he had to do with the right matter This threefold Mercury then or sum total is the first Seed of all Metals as also of the other two kindes or Genus's which is by little and little coagulated and by the continual action of heat lying in the Myne hardened and tincted when it is perfectly pure but it makes up several species and acquires divers forms and colours according to the variety of the place and adjacent matter producing Metals Minerals and Stones in the bowels Trees and Plants in the surface of the Earth as she is animated by the Solar Rayes without which she would be barren for Nature at first established this for a Law That the Sun should perpetually nourish and calefie the matter alwayes moving its threefold faculty Animal Vegetable and Mineral to its effect And this is the Cause why Hermes wrote the Sun its Father CHAP. 5. How the Moon is the Mother of the Spirit of the World and the Universal Matter LEst any might here be deceived he must consider That as one of us a Microcosm hath a Body a Spirit and a Soul even so hath the Macrocosm and seeing nothing exists that wants these three there must needs be great affinity amongst them so that no one of them can be found without the other and though two of them may seem sometimes to be separated from the subject yet they are onely hidden in the third that remains as a subtile and profound Artist may easily experience by the examination of Fire What therefore is Matter the same is Spirit and what is Spirit may and that not impertinently be called a Body If we consider That they are indivisible and by Natures Laws so generated that they are one and the same thing by which account it appears that the matter is not
a Resurrection by the Ablation of all mortiferous and corruptive Accidents And thus it will attain the height of perfection which is effected by Separation of Earth from Fire the subtile from the spiss and by Fixation of its purged part by gradual heat But that I may speak without ambages and doubts This ascent into Heaven which is the Sublimation and Exaltation of its parts to perfection cannot be effected unless Separation and Purification go before and give place to Fixation as to the scope and ultimate end of Art And here note That this is done for two ends one is That the Tincture may be perpetuated the other That the volatile and combustile Sulphur of the Mercury may be separated and extracted which cannot be effected but by the long and continual action of Fire and this Fire must be regular lest violent precipitation in the beginning make the pure Spirit of Mercury not yet fixed to ascend which Comes Trevisanus hints at saying That Writers differ about the structure of the Fire though they all aim at one and the same scope to wit That it should be so made that the fugitive Spirit should flie away before the persequent suffered any thing from the Fire that is that the spiritual part should not leave the corporal through the ardour of the Fire which should fix it by the action of common Fire discreetly applied in its several degrees wherein the whole of this Art consists But some may say If Fixation in the Fire communicate Permanency to this penetrating subtilty how shall it afterwards be sublimated Let such take waxen Wings and they shall see that they will have a minde to flie from this Prison the Earth But they must minde lest ascending too high the Sun melt their Wings and burn their Feathers and so precipitate them into the Sea But let them imitate wise Daedalus who held the mean betwixt two extreams because if he had flown too low the Water would have loaden his Wings if too high the Sun would have melted his Wax It was the impatience and blinde desire Icarus had of overcoming Daedalus that wrought his ruine And whence came Phaëton's pernicious ruine when he would govern the Sun but that he thought himself more apt for this work then his Father who admonished him thus Hac sit iter manefesta votae vestigia cernes Utque ferant aequos Caelum Terra calores Nec preme nec summum molire per aethera currum Altius egressus Caelestia signa cremabis Inferius Terras medio tutissimus ibis Run where thou seest the marks that I have made With these same wheels and that thou maist evade The danger of burning Heaven Sea or Earth Flie not too high nor yet stoope down beneath This tract for if too high you soar you 'll fire The Heavens if too low the Earth you 'll move with ire Keep then the mean as safest in your gyre But the recitation of these Ovidian Verses are not enough though they be most true according to the Opinion of the Ancients I will rather explicate their intention folded up in the Coat of their Fables seeing those onely serve to the expert in this Art Let the curious then know That when Hermes says this thing must ascend into Heaven and again descend to the Earth and acquire the vertue of both he means not that the matter should be sublimated to the top of the Vessel but onely that it is necessary that after perfect fixation some spiritual portion be applied to it whereby it may be dissolved and become altogether spiritual leaving its Terrestrial consistence and assuming an aery Nature which is the Philosophers Heaven and when it hath reached this simplicity be again coagulated and reduced to Earth by a new coction effected by the same degree of heat till the Body so imbrace the Spirit that they become one incorporated and by this means acquire a Celestial subtilty and a Terrestrial fixation And that we may always note Natures ways if this Icarus cannot totally elevate himself he must resartiate his wings by putting to new wax new feathers that is by reiterated dissolutions which the Masters of this Art so oft repeat that they seem importunate to all such as understand not the consequence of this repetition which yet is onely that things might be better united being mixed by their least particles which none can effect without the purification both of the Body and Spirit keeping the Spirit volatile from all Terrestrial impurities and the Body from all internal Dregs during this fixation These things then ascend into heaven by Dissolutions and descend to the Earth by congelations This Body then glorified will ascend into Heaven upon the wings of its Spirit and in the same perfection again descend to the Earth to separate good from evil and preserve the one but destroy the other that is what Bodies soever it enters it ejects their impurities and conserves their purer substance for reiterated solutions and fixations gave it power to enter Bodies This Hermaphroditical yong man and his delicate Salmacis must be washed in a Fountain that they may embrace each other and Salmacis burning in love say When shall the time come that this fair Yong man shall never be separated from me nor I from him and that our mutual loves may perpetuate their conjunction in felicity that so these two Bodies may have one heart and one face and then we must take care that the Island Delos remain immoveable and that Apollo and Diana whom Latona there brought forth may be both stayed in that place This fable denotes nothing but that the dissolved matter wherein the Philosophers sun and moon is contained should again be congealed and fixed I would not have my Reader imagine that he shall in this Book finde the rich Mines of Peru to satiate his avarice and make him rich withal though I have sufficiently demonstrated in several places to men that have their eyes in their heads that the way to these riches is not unknown to me Yet I will not easily be perswaded to undertake so long a journey for certain reasons not unlike those that held Trevisanus two years from this enterprise after he had got the perfect knowledge of this Magistery Onely I have in my minde determined to ratifie that most precious confection or rather inestimable treasure which benign Nature gives for the sustentation and prolongation of mans life who from God received priviledge to be mans Protector which I undertake out of an honourable desire that I may by my industry advance the publike good when the favorable Star of experience hath led me to my secure Port which I would willingly impart to curious Men For I have so successfully elaborated this Universal Spirit that with a small quantity I have restored above a hundred men consumed with different Diseases to sanity and doubtless many excellent wits would have penetrated deeper into this obscure and devious Wood but that
Cloak obduced with rust and covered with thick darkness feeding all kindes of Animals into whose belly the vertues of the Celestial Luminaries continually descend penetrating the very bowels of the Earth and impraegnanting it with all kindes of Creatures where the elementary qualities and powers offer their services to this old Parent as to the Producer and Distributer of all things who continually occupies Iliastus in dispensing of specifical forms and Archeus in exciting vital heat which Iliastus and Archeus are as it were two Instruments whereby he informs conserves and augments all things Here note That by Iliastus we mean a general Steward that affords matter for all generation and by Archeus natural or radical heat which digests this matter and acts upon it This Demogorgon then is he by whom as by his Instrument God produces all things in and under Heaven so that he containing his Iliastus and Archeus does with singular providence unknown to vulgar Philosophers and therefore masked under the supplement of occult causes form and generate then nourish and preserve all things exercising the office of a good Housholder or Steward who hath his Cellar in the bowels of the Earth and thence draws Life and vigour for his Family The Earth therefore which is the Receptacle of Celestial Influences and Vertues contains in it the Fountain of this vital Spirit from whose Rivulets Animals Minerals and Vegetables derive Life which communicates to them sense essence and vegetation as it findes their matter disposed for motion and hence such things as are compounded of a more ducible Mass and fit for such motion become sensitive and vegetable and able to generate things like themselves because they are indued with Life for Plants and the like whose Spirits are not cohibited in too crass and hard matter encrease and multiply grenerating things like themselves by seed and plantation but not like Animals but Minerals whose Life is neither sensitive nor vegetive but onely essential because their composition being too hard and gross too straightly captivates their Spirit that they cannot produce any thing like themselves unless they be first purged from their gross impurity and reduced to the subtilty of their first matter about which Aurelius Augurellus that excellent Poet and Philosopher writes thus Lib. 1. Chrysop Haec inter variant quae nec primordia rerum Extant quaeque frui vitali sorte negantur Ut media quaecunque sedent tellure mâ—tella Quique latent miro grati fulgore lapillâ— Nullo namque genus sobolemve auger putantur Semine sed cunctos aevi torpere per annos Verum haec ipsa etiam secreto vivere quivis Sentiat vitae divino munere fungi Haec oriri eadem si contemplabitur et si Augeri ex sese penitus increscere cernet Vt mox e rariis patefactis nosse licebit Quod si non sobolem educunt non caetera vertunt In semet causa est quod multa spiritus illic Materie abstrusus vitam qui porrigit omnem Explicat aegre ex se vires in vivida promat Has hominum virtus densa sub mole latentes But those that neither Life enjoy nor yet First matter are but in the Earth do sit As Metals rich and Stones that precious be Differ from these for no off-spring we see They generate nor kinde augment but lie Resting themselves yet he that shall espie Their secret acts and with himself compute Their augmentation cannot sure conclude That th' are quite void of life for though they do No off-spring generate nor turn into Themselvs nor other things yet life they have Which is so chained in the closer cave Of their dense solid matter that they can't Exert such actions as a brute or Plant. Yet if mans skill do quit them of these bonds Their vertue 's such as will make them amends For when these Minerals are pure they will by their specifical form though not generate something like themselves yet work such an alteration and perfection in things like themselves that they shall equalize the Philosophical Elixir whose divine vertues wise-men so much admire fools so much contemn because their blinde eyes cannot penetrate to the Centre of this Mystery If therefore Animals Minerals and Vegetables which constitute the greatest part of this visible World be full of Life what Reason have we to think That the whole is more imperfect then part thereof But let us sink further into Sublunaries if the Celestial Bodies give Life to the Inferious they must certainly and necessarily be enlivened by the Universal Spirit for nothing can give that it hath not of which let us hear Augurellus Hoc etenim quic quid diffunditur undique Caeli Aeraque Terras laâ—i marmoris aequoâ— Intus agi reserunt anima qua vivere mundi Cuncta putant ipsumque hac mundum ducere vitam All that 's contain'd under Heavens Canopy Both fire air earth eke the boundless sea Are mov'd they say by a most ample Spirit That th' world enlivens all that it inherit But natural motion is alwayes conjoyned with Life how then can that produce Life and motion in another that hath them not in it self Motion never forsakes that which hath Life and that which either moves or is moved alwayes cannot want Life The Soul of the Universe moving it self spontaneously is the fountain and original of all corporal motion for the most subtile part of this Mundane Soul soaring high and inhabiting the Heavens is continually wheeled about with the Celestial Bodies which it self circumduces with its proper and continual motion and for this Reason the superiour Bodies are more lively and perfect then the inferiours because they are continually moved orbicularly and that which is moved continually must needs be immortal And thus it appears that the whole World is full of Life and that the Life of every species and individual is but a participation of this Universal Life of the World which alone may be properly called an Animal in whose corporal Elements the seeds of all visible and corporal thing are hidden and included for we see many Plants grow without precedent seeds and many Animals produced without copulation of Male with Female The visible seed of Plants lies in their Grains of Animals in their Genitors Metals also have their seed but such as is not visible but by true Philosophers who know how with great industry to extract it from its proper subject And unless there be a certain procreative faculty in the Elements wherein Generation is potentially included many Herbs would scarce germinate on the Earth much less on high Walls where no seed was ever sown nor Herb planted neither would so many kindes of Animals be generated in the Earth or Water without copulation of Sexes as there are which do by copulation afterwards perpetuate their species though themselves were not generated by the commixtion of any Parents as we see in Snakes generated of Mud and Flies and other little Animals
onely Matter or Soul or Spirit but refers and represents all because one is always generated and nourished with the other so that in the propagation and action of one the two other are always present When therefore we say That the Moon is the Mother of the Spirit and universal matter we speak not irrationally nor assert any absurdity but here we must more intimously enquire whence this Maternity proceeds Heat and Moisture then are the two Keyes of Generation and Heat performs the office of the Male but Moisture of the Female Corruption arises upon the action of Heat over Moisture and Generation follows upon Corruption as we may see in the small Body of an Egg wherein by the heat of Fomentation and Incubation the Sperm putrefies and afterwards the Chicken is coagulated and formed The same is also apparent in the Generation of Man who by the help of the natural Heat of the Woman acting upon the Masculine and Feminine Sperm united in her matrix is deduced to a compleat Body perfect in all its parts By Corruption here we understand Mutation and passage of one form into another which cannot be effected without the mediation of putrefaction which is the sole medium and way to Generation which is also promoted by the help of some Mercury or Quicksilver which is the special Conductor of the vegetative faculty and the Sperms of all Bodies are aqueous and as it were full of Mercurial humour and if their innate Heat be brought from potency to act by the external heat of the Sun then may their Generation be procured by decoction Hence the ancient Philosophers assert That the Sun and Man generate the Sun the terrestrial Sun which is Gold and Man Man And it is manifest That without the heat of the Sun the heat of the Elementary Fire is dead and barren Whence the Sun is also called the Master of Life and Generation Heat then in all Generations comes from the Sun but radical moisture by the influence of the Moon which influence all sublunaries receive and feel when this Planet is in its encrease or wane And thus you have an account how and why Hermes called the Sun Father and the Moon Mother to this universal matter for the heat of the Sun and moisture of the Moon generate all things because heat and moisture in a due temperament cause conception and upon conception Life and Generation And though Fire and Water be contraries yet one can do no good without the congress of the other but by their diverse actions all things conceive and are conceived Ainsi dans l'univers discordante concorde Aux Generations devient apte s' accorde If Generation in the world be had Then what erst discord is in concord made Yet I would not have my Reader suspect That by too hasty judgement I would abstract Hermes his prime intention from the broad way of all Alchymists into the by-paths wherein I tread because I know That all good Philosophers according to his minde and will say That the Sun and Moon should be in conjunction that they may absolve perfect Generation for as Arnoldus de villa nova in Flore florum says The Philosophers Sperm is not joyned to their Body but by the mediation of their Moon which Moon is not common Silver but the true matter of their Stone which congregates and inseparably retains in its belly Body which is the Sun and Sperm which is Mercury And he speaks of this Moon in his novum Lumen where he says That excepting his Master of whom he learned his work he knew none that ever operated in the true matter but all were extravagant and erroneous in the election of their matter as if they would generate a man of a dog CHAP. 6. That the Root of the Spirit of the World must be sought in the Air. WInde is nothing but Air moved and agitated as we may learn from the respiration of Animals which blow Winde when they breath Air. Winde then is Air and Air is wholly vital and the breath of Life for without Air nothing can live or subsist for whatsoever is deprived thereof is suffocated and dies yea Plants themselves that are destituted of free Air wither and are in respect of others dry and dead We therefore have some Reason to say That Air is a vital Spirit penetrating all things communicating Life and consistence to all binding moving and filling all By this Air then the Universal Spirit that lies hid and shut in all things is generated and manifested by this it is ingrossed formed and made more apt for Generation whereof Calid the Philosopher treating sayes not without Reason That Minerals have their Roots in the Air their Heads and Tops in the Earth As if he should have said The Air causes this Spirit to enliven augment and multiply Minerals in the Earth though those that have some experience in preparing the Philosophers Stones may say That this place should be otherwise understood for according to their Doctrine in their Philosophical Works there are two parts one volatile which is elevated in form of a vapour and then condensed and resolved into Water and this they call the Spirit the other more fixed residing in the bottom of the Vessel which they call the Body Rosinus explains this sentence by another of the same Authors for he saith Take the things off their souls and exalt them on high and reap them in the tops of their Mountains and reduce them to their Roots where the Glosser sayes These words are true and cleer without envy and ambiguity though he declares not what he understands by things whereof he speaks But by Mountains saith Rosinus the Philosopher means Cucurbites by the tops of their Mountains Alembicks by reaping he means we must receive the Water of the aforesaid things through the Alembick into the Receptacle by reducing them to their Roots he means That we should reduce the said Water to the Earth whence it arose This is also confirmed by Morienus who saith That the Philosophers operations consist onely in extracting Water from the Earth and reducing it to the Earth till the Earth putrefie for the Earth putrefies when this Water is purified which being once pure will by God's help direct and perfect the whole Magistry Some have exploded Air out of the order of the Elements thinking it as glue or lime to conjoyn divers Natures judging it the Spirit or Instrument of the World because it is the Chariot of the Universal Spirit for it first receives the influences of all Celestial Bodies and communicates them to other Elements and mix'd Bodies In the mean while like some divine Looking-glass receiving and retaining the species and forms of all natural things which it carries along with it and insinuating it self into the pores of Animals impresses those forms on them whether they sleep or wake We learn from Animals and Vegetables That every Spirit neer the Earth receives its vertue and vigor from the Air for
we see such things encrease and extol themselves the Spirit which gives them Life doth so much delight in Air as the place where it had its origine Hermes also saith That the Air carries it in its belly Whereunto Aristotle subscribes saying That moist things proceed from the Air and Terrene things from the moist ones for Air being next the Earth humectates it on every side and the humour thereof being condensed by innate heat is turned into a certain kinde of Earth which contains Mercury and Sulphur in due proportions CHAP. 7. How the Earth nourishes this Universal Spirit THough this Spirit be infused into and dwells in superiour as well as inferiour Bodies yet it may be best known and discerned in Bodies most evident and neer to our view of which the Earth is neerest and most vegetable in it therefore is this Spirit generated and manifested more copiously for the Earth is a certain mark whereto all the Influences Rayes and Vertues of the superiour Bodies tend It is moreover the Fundament and Basis of the other Elements containing in it self the seeds and seminal vertues of all things for which cause it is rightly called the common Mother of all Animals Vegetables and Minerals It is therefore impregnated by the Heavens and produces all things out of its womb and though this Spirit were expelled washed away or separated from it by what way you please yet the Earth thus void of Spirit if left a while in the Air would again be impregnated by the Celestial vertues and influences so as to produce some Chystalline stones and lucent sparks and by this means the Spirit which was taken for separated would again regerminate in the Earth Impregnation then made by the action of the Heavens and of the first qualities doth continually render her generative for out of her womb come all things sublunary She produces all things endued with life preserves nourishes and at last resolves them into their own Nature When she is agitated by these actions she causes a twofold expiration one without her another within her which expirations egrede from this Terrene Spirit when moved and calefied by the Celestial heat The expiration elevated without or above the Earth if it be humid causes and produces dew and frost if dry winde thunder and other dry Aereal impressions but the expiration included in the Earth if it be humid generates liquable Metals and Minerals if dry stones and the like that are not liquable All things vegetable proceed from and are nourished by this Spirit whereof the Earth is Nurse for which cause the ancient Poets call the Earth the common Mother and Nurse of all Creatures CHAP. 8. That the Spirit of the World is the cause of perfection in all THe Universal Spirit is the general Genus and common to every Genus for if we cast our eyes into the inferiour or elementary World we see it divided into three subalternals to wit animal vegetable and mineral kindes and yet the same in all onely operating diversly according to the diversity of its forms And hence the infinite variety of Creatures arises for else there would be only one species in the Universe but if we perpend the superiour and Celestial World we shall also finde That the Spirit is one equal in all and differing in nothing but purity and subtilty for the Celestial Spirits are procreated of its pure igneous substance and differ from Terrene ones in corporal grosness and the Celestial Globes and Luminaries are made of its middle and Aereal substance it constitutes therefore all things because it hath in it both the faculties of superior and inferior Bodies and because it is of an exquisite temper for this Body is in all the beginning and end of perfection and if it were destituted of its faculties it could never perfect any thing and here we understand simple and natural perfection and although it be perfect onely according to the intent of Nature containing in it self the rule line action and power of perfection yet it acquires vertues and faculties above the sphere of natural things and can deduce things from potency to act This Spirit alters and penetrates all things though never so gross mollifies hard things hardens soft things and augments nourishes and conserves all things This Spirit also being in all Bodies the Author of Generation and Corruption hath necessarily a threefold operation for by its driness it must enliven and by its coldness congeal and by its moisture congregate and unite for which it hath a threefold name imposed on it desumed from the three kindes of Earth for they call it vitrifying salsuginous and Mercurial because of Salt Glass and Mercury all things are made though Paracelsus reckons these principles otherwise to wit Salt Sulphur and Mercury adding Glass as a fourth As if he should say All things are made of these three first principles and reduced at last to the fourth as though neither Nature nor Art could produce any thing beyond Glass But I shall prove my own sentence by Examples and Reason The Bones of Animals are consolidated and hardened by vitrification the Flesh and Nerves concreted by Salt and united and congregated into one mass by the Mercurial humour In Vegetables also the shells of Almonds Pine-Nuts Wall-Nuts and the like as also of Oysters and Snails in Land and Sea may be made by vitrification and the taste demonstrates That these Bodies are saltish for nothing wants Salt but what is insipid yea those things are very saltish whereof Glass is made as Fem Kali and the like Some may here object That it is not Glass but Salt that causes the induration of Bones Shells and the like which I have mentioned Whereunto I answer That Experience and Reason speak the contrary for Salt is resolved and melted by the least moisture of Air or Water but the Bones and Shells before mentioned resist liquefaction as they are more or less hardened by this Glass-making faculty for the ultimate confirmation of which my assertion I may adduce precious Stones Adamant and Chrystal which are nothing but Glass elaborated to perfection in the Furnace of Nature And now that all things are condensed by Mercury is so manifest that it needs no other Testimony but common Experience Minerals have enough of Salt Sulphur and Mercury in them Stones and such effoded things as acquire not extention and fusion by the Hammer and Fire have some Salt in them but this is superated by the adustion of corruptive Sulphur which comes upon their induration and vitrification Metals and all ductile things are concreted and condensed by Salt and Mercury and so much hardened by vitrification that they bid some resistence to the Hammer which is indeed more or less according to their implication with more or less impurity and adust Earth which comes upon the coagulation of their Mercury And thus we may affirm that all things are made of the ternal number of Glass Salt and Mercury or Water
Male and Female in all Generations and are the first Parents of corporification of the Spirit of the World as hereafter we shall make appear But Fire is the first Operator because action precedes passion though the Patient be inseparably co-existent with the Agent as the old Stoick Zenon asserts who thought that the substance of Fire was by Air turned into Water and there conserved as the general Sperm and first universal matter whence all things were first generated Thales Milesius whom the Greeks surnamed the wise perceiving the matter patient said That Water was the first matter which Heraclitus attributed to the Sea and Moses more illuminated then both saith That before the heaven and earth were created the Spirit of the Lord moved on the face of the waters calling Fire because of its noble and pure essence The Spirit of God In saying therefore That Fire is the first principle of beings I transgress not the limits of Reason and Verity for it is without doubt the first Operator and the last Destroyer and Changer of forms whose cause it is even till it hath brought them to their period and first matter beyond which there is no progress but onely a transformation as I shall by and by declare by comparison with visible and familiar beings the first active potency which begins to operate in the production of man is the agitation or motion of heat which imitating the action of fire whose Nature is chiefly separative draws Sperm from the whole Body wherein Man's seed is potentially included and cocts and digests it thereby rendring it apt for expulsion and afterwards for Generation and Augmentation which Generation and Augmentation is alwayes helped by Fire which is the sole Actor so that if it should attain the end of its exaltation being inflamed by the Sulphur of Excrements and impurity of Aliments it would absume the radical Moisture which is the Seat and Preserver of Life which done the fire remits not of its power and action till by resolution and corruption it brings the Body to Ashes which nothing can do but fire But that we may make this more palpable and finde out the first matter by the knowledge of the last let us impose a Body on a common Fire and we shall see that what is inflammable in it will be totally consumed and redacted to a few Ashes which Ashes also will participate of a fiery Nature and for their last subject and matter turn into a certain Salt whose sole Parent and Multiplier Fire must needs be And though these should be further turned yet Salt would alwayes be left in whose internals we may finde Fire which is delighted with its like And by this means Alchymists finde that there is something in Salt that is incombustible or secret Elementary Fire which hath the same actions with primitive Fire upon which account they call it the Balsam of the Body because it contains that that gives life as also that conserves and augments it which is nothing else but a moist vapour accompanied with moderate heat Johannes Fontanus in his Philosophical Narrations En son Romant Philosophique shews That he was not ignorant of this Secret where he brings in Nature speaking thus Aucuns disent que feu n' engendre De son naturel fo rs que cendre Mais leur reverence sauvee Nature est dans le feu autee Et si prover je le vou loye Le sel a Tesmoing je prendoye Some dare t' affirm that fire can generate Nothing but ashes but those seem to relate The truth thereof who say that in fires brest All Natures operations are imprest And if hereof a proof you do require Salt gives you proof enough what is in fire And that it participates of moisture is plain enough from its easie resolution as also its fulness of heat is demonstrable from its ready congelation from which we may observe That Fire acts and is united with Fire as in liquefaction Air acts and is joyned with Air for how in one subject could the dry imbibe the moist if there were no innate heat seeing driness as it proceeds from heat doth naturally imbibe moisture And hence we may easily understand That the Demogorgon or central Fire cannot be destitute of moisture on which it may act and thence elevate a vapour mixed of two qualities which I call The Spirit of the World but many Philosophers Mercury of Merries because all other proceed from this naturally but this elevated vapour is not yet a Body but a mean betwixt a Body and a Spirit participating of both Natures which whilst it remains in that state can generate nothing It is therefore necessary That it either assume or form a Body which it thus doth This subtile vapour proceeding from dry and moist principles when it is elevated penetrates the spungyness of the Earth wherein it is gradually turned into Mercurial Water by the occurse of the ambient Air and of the Earth it self whose surface is far distant from its Centre where the Fire resides whence this heat arises After the like manner as we see in an Alembick where the vapour or Spirit to be distilled runs out But this vapour and its water partaking of two principles heat and moisture it is ingrossed and by moderate and continued coction condensed The principal cause and mean of which action is innate Fire which contains this very vapour and by its continual action stimulates and compels it to imbibe this moisture and to coagulate this Water not in all parts with a like solidity and hardness nor yet altogether but first with a mucilaginous and different solidity Now that which Nature assayes to do in the information of Idea's is to begin their induration and solidity which must necessarily hold on in Natures way which is a progress from one extream to another by intermediate disposition And Nature thus continuing its digestion this Mucilage stays of whose grosser matter Metals are generated in the veins of the Earth or cavities of Rocks which differ not in substance being produced by one and the same seed but onely in accidents which they take from the diversities of the places and matrixes where they are generated But the more subtile part of this vapour ascends to the surface of the Earth where it stays by compulsion and being in continual agitation though it can neither regrede nor ascend higher and finding no solid matter to carry it with it it is compelled to continue Natures intention and therefore serves for the Generation and Corporification of individuals But that what I have said may be better understood let us take some one individual and let us see how it is produced for this will ascertain us that the Spirit of the World assumes a Body and shew us how it is incorporated An Acorn may be long enough set or sown in the Earth and consume without germination unless some Agent be neer it that may deduce its occult potency naturally within it
into act And whence can any one imagine this action to proceed unless from the central Fire issuing out of Demogorgon's brest Which Fire attracted and fomented by the Solar Rayes will redouble its force vertue and efficacy Does not then this germination derive its original from Natures Fire which elevating and multiplying its vapour excites the innate heat of the Acorn which is of its own side resolved into a vapour by the mediation of Air and this raised vapour is nourished and augmented by the first vapour which never ceases to act on the matter of the Acorn till it have brought it to the period of that perfection to which Nature destined it which is to make it an Oak which when it hath acquired its perfect magnitude begins not indeed to die but to decline and gradually to return to its first form even to the Earth where the same vapour is not idle or deficient for of the putritude of this Tree certain Animals called Horse-lice with abundance of Worms are thereby generated yea when the Oak is turned into perfect Earth it causes a new vegetation But if any should say That the Acorn is augmented and multiplied to this magnitude he erres for it is manifest That in this germination the Acorn remains whole without diminution yea separates it self from the Tree when it is germinated The Oak then grows not from the augmentation and multiplication of the Acorn neither is it from addition and abstraction from the adjacent Earth for then so much of the Earth would be exhausted as the Trees magnitude is it must therefore necessarily proceed from some other way matter seeing by these wayes it cannot This Spirit then or Vapour which is ordained for no other end is that which is incorporated and produces this individual from which the creation augmentation and preservation of all things proceed and not from the Mass of the Earth which is nothing but the Excrement of the spirituous and primaeve matter as it appears by the digestion of the stomach which rejects Excrements in the same weight and quantity almost that it assumed Meat in when nevertheless it hath extracted its proper nutriment from it which is onely the Spirit included in that Mass which by its siccity makes it self a Body and by its humidity dilates and augments it self CHAP. 2. Of the conversion of this Spirit into Earth and how its vertue remans integrally in this Earth THe former Reasons seem sufficiently to evince That the Spirit of the World assumes a Body now we should declare how it is corporified and though in this search the labour will be great and effect small yet shall I endeavour to make this thing comprehensible especially for their sakes who in their nativities have had favourable Stars and are thereby rendred Admirers of these rarer Effects and Searchers of these occulter Secrets for in that many learned and curious Men have erred in the inquisition and detection of this Body arises from hence That some have believed this knowledge far to exceed Man's capacity and onely attainable by Angels or Devils Others have thought That it being called The Spirit of the World no Man should feign to himself any but an Universal Body because an Universal Spirit must also have an Universal Body And others have thought That it could not be perceived but by conversion of more perfect Bodies into their first Sperm and Spirit by exact and industrious subtiliation not minding nor considering That Nature admits of no regress and That Bodies by how much they are more perfect by so much they are further distant from their principles and first corporeity Some are of opinion That a Quintessence might be extracted from Bodies perswading themselves That the more subtile and volatile part is that Spirit they seek so erring from the scope at which they aim as if they would seek the East in the West for they make Bodies spiritual where they should make Spirits corporeal But seeing this Spirit is manifestly converted into a Terrene Body and without contradiction or doubt generates all bodies it must therefore be extracted by them because otherwise they forsake the direct tract of Nature and seeing it is made a Terrene Body it may be perfected by Fire into something which the Quintessentials call their Heaven But corporification begins from the Earth for the first work of Mercury is to make Earth Why then do they begin with making of Fire which would proceed as if a Man should build a House and begin at the Roof But such as would reduce Bodies to their first being pretend and have more specious Reasons then those that would redact them to a Quintessence save that they go in a crooked way that leads them contrary to their meanings for besides that Nature never goes backwards they minde not that they should follow the way of completion and not of destruction or reversion to their origines and nativity for besides the impossibility of this course these wayes are so long and difficult that an ordinary term of Life cannot reach their end Moreover they can never attain the true and natural first Being this way but onely a phantastical Body far different from that wherewith Nature effects her productive operations which is solely the legitimate Sperm of all Bodies And if we consider now That all Bodies are made by Terrification we must needs grant That there is some prejacent subject most apt for the making of Earth But I said That in the beginning Fire was the first Operator in the World which elevates a spirituous Vapour then cocts dries and incorporates it for a Body cannot be made without coagulation which necessarily follows the driness of Fire And in what other place can this immassation desiccation and coagulation be made save in the Earth whence all Bodies proceed The prejacent matter then must needs be there occluded for if it be not there then all Bodies are made of nothing which is repugnant to Natures course which would have every thing to have its principle and out of nothing nothing but nothing to proceed This matter or principle then is bound to the Body of the Earth where it is nourished ingrossed and incorporated and therefore such as would extract the Quintessence out of perfect simple or imperfect Metals should do better to open the Matrix of the Mother and take the Sperm out there then to kill and destroy her Infants or adult Off-spring while they go about to reduce them to the state wherein they were in time of conception But if they should open this Matrix what would they there finde for nothing appears to sight or sense And many believing this way most profitable have been deceived whilst they thought in the bellies of Mynes to finde some seed of Gold which missing of they despair of their purpose because they never met with a middle disposition betwixt hardness and softness in Metals If therefore the eye can discern nothing here how then is
or through sloath or avarice neglected And that these things are thus carried is apparent from certain Potions introsumed which have no other effect but onely to make the Belly laxative or purge out not that matter that causes the Disease but some other Excrement that hath nothing to do with the Disease or else through the ill preparation dispensation or impertinent adaptation of simples cause superfluous evacuations to the ruine of Nature too weak before but now more enervated both by reason of vacuity which it abhors above all things and also by reason of violent motion caused by such Purges And thus they rather procure Death then Sanity for Nature can no more endure violent motion then vacuity and she is very impatient of these two her sworn Enemies which attempt so evidently her destruction And for this cause common Medicine seldom cures obstinate Diseases by their Compositions as they commonly prepare them and if amongst many any one be cured this happens not because of Pills Boles and Potions but of the strength of Nature which is able to overcome the impure quantity mixed with these remedies and extract something out of their pure substance commodious for its subsidy or else because the poysonous quality of these excrementitious and corruptive things is rejected and expelled by Nature which is of that power that it carries with it some portion of the peccant humour which is like to it by attraction and sympathy And thus an extraneous Medicament impugning the Body moves Nature which provoked and prepared to resist this her Enemy rejects and violently impugnes what is contrary to her And now if a Medicament should always be convenient and not contrary to Nature it should be purged from its poyson that is from its excrementitious Mass Wherefore a Medick should first chuse such things as are convenient for and hold sympathy with Man's Body and free them from their impurities or at least chuse such as contain in them the general vertue or innate purity which Purification cannot be effected till the impure and noxious be separated and destroyed and the pure restored which lay buried and suffocated under the Excrements But it being none of my Profession to make Medicaments I will not further treat of this business but will return into the way whence I have a little swerved I say therefore Seeing there is no inferiour thing but that 's infected with Poyson immerged in Excrements and buried in Dregs that cause its mortification and hinder the liberty and action of its legitimate substance Nature is constrained by a certain necessity to make use of Separation which is effected by division of the pure from the impure the subtile from the gross and the salutary from the destructive part But because this admirable Agent works her operations in darkness labouring in bodies by a secret digestion she never exceeds simple perfection for hereto onely is her power extended whence corporal Elements being not able to conduce to the highest degree of their proprieties the Bodies wherein they are included Philosophers prudently endeavour to separate their substance from their corruptive Mass and after this Separation in Natures way to wit by Digestion and Sublimation to carry them to the highest degree of purity getting them by Regeneration a new form taking away their former Nature Qualities and Proprieties and changing their impure Bodies into Spirits full of purity their moisture and cold into dryness and heat practising and effecting this not onely in some species or simples but in the great Body of the World also which is our Universal Spirit for unless the Universal Nature of all things be renewed it is impossible to bring it to a state of incorruption Regeneration then is the first Fruits of Separation but as a Grain can of it self generate nothing unless it die and putrefie in the Earth so it is impossible any thing should be renewed or regenerated save by precedent mortification Mortification then is the first step to Separation and the onely tract to that end for as long as Bodies remain in their old Corruption and origine Separation cannot reach them unless putrefaction and mortification lead the way which also our Lord Jesus divinely taught saying Unless that a Man like a Grain of Corn die he cannot acquire life incorruptible not as if he meant that life incorruptible should be acquired by death corporal for then impious and wicked Men by dying would attain Beatitude with the Good and Just but he meant that the old Man should die that is mortifie and separate his old Corruption from him which he attracted from the Seed of his first Parents And this Corruption is properly intemperance and excess introduced by the eating of the forbidden Fruit by which Death entred the World and since which Man ceased not to die because afterwards the Earth and all it produced were infected by the Poyson of the fraudulent Serpent hidden in their Aliments whose enticements led Man to transgression and to the eating of Fruit wherein death was included And this corrupting Serpent is he that I call Satan who creeping and without ceasing going about the Earth mixes his Poyson therewith and with all things it produces to wit Animals Vegetables and Minerals with intent to infect the World with his Poyson and tyrannize over Man Upon this intemperance and excess in diet a privation of Vertue followed for Vice is nothing but a neglect of what is just and justice is a temperate desire and continual progress to good This intemperance then and excess must die in us because it generates all kinde of sin in us and stimulates us to malice and impiety and therefore we are injoyned to live soberly and shun gluttony and drunkenness the true Authors of all carnal lusts and that we fast often to extinguish those internal flames which move our Sences and burn our Blood to Corruption The Anatomists of Man know that Man is twofold the one Celestial and immortal the other Terrestrial and corruptible and the first is as a Sojourner the second as a Prisoner But here arises a great Question How it comes to pass that the heavenly Man can whilst buried in this putrid and corrupt Carkase conserve his essential purity for it is manifest That a Liquor though never so precious and excellent will lose its sapour and odour if it be long contained in a stinking Vessel and Man also though never so sound is subject to infection if he dwell in a pestilent House a heavenly Man is of himself good and sincere but as he is joyned to the Terrestrial to whom impurity and vices naturally adhere he can scarcely remain free from spots The depravation of this essential purity depends without doubt on the eating the forbidden Fruit or to speak more expresly on the intemperance of Aliments condited with pernicious and contagious Corruption for which cause this intemperance corruption must be mortified that the old Destroyer of Man may be restrained that that
may be repaired by newness of life which makes us like our heavenly Father in incorruption And our Restorer Jesus hath taught us two ways to Regeneration one by the Water of Baptism and the other by the Fire of the Holy Ghost Water washes away the spots and Fire consumes and separates all impurity from the pure essence and as his precious Blood which is true Water indeed purges away our sins and saves us from that death which the mortal corruption of our earthly Parent introduced so Water dissolves and purges away those excrementitious impurities which corrupt all substances The Fire of the Holy Spirit consumes and separates the excrementitious impurity of sins and so the vulgar Fire blots out the impurity of Bodies which should therefore be mortified that it may be regenerated and this Mortification is that Putrefaction and Digestion which fits it to receive Separation and this Mortification is then wrought in us when the Sun of the Holy Spirit rises upon our Hearts and warms our Centre consuming by little and little the corrupt affections of old Adam After the same manner the Chymical Fire reverberating its flame about the Body that is to be purged burns and annihilates that that is of an extraneous Nature and that more or less as the impurity is more or less obstinate to Separation which is effected by Distillation This then is the right way which Nature observes in the Regeneration of all things which will have no laudable effect in Medicine unless they be gegenerated by Water and Fire But the same things after this second Nativity are most free in their vertues and actions whereas before their vital functions were buried in an excrementitious Mass and though the benign influences of Heaven had given them much vertue yet could not they exert it even so a Man whilst he is detained in the impure Prison of old Adam he can produce no good and laudable action But before I proceed further in the practical explication of these things I must return to my begun-order to wit that after I have given the definition of Separation and declared of how many kindes it is that now I may shew what these kindes are whence things proceed to be separated and whence this separative vertue arises And I have sufficiently demonstrated That there are in Bodies two parts the one is an Excrement the other substance the one accidental and the other substantial for substance simply considered is wholly pure and without Corruption but an Excrement wholly impure mixing it self with the substance and contaminating and subverting its purity The Generation and Formation of substance is sufficiently detected in the two first Chapters of this Book it now rests that I explain the Nature and Qualities of Excrements where I infer from the aforesaid Narration that nothing but Excrements should be separated supposing this for undeniable That amongst passible things in this sublunary World nothing is void and free from Excrements for when God separated the parts of the World he commanded That some should descend to the lowest Region as partaking of the grosness of the first matter and that they should there congregate amongst themselves and of this feculent Mass the Earth was formed which is nevertheless indued with some part of pure substance though diffused through its thick crassitude after that Phoebus had slain the monstrous Python swelled up with poysonous humours which was generated of the mud of the Earth that is when the innate siccity had imbibed the superfluous humidity by the operation of natural heat the Earth begun to feel the actions of this substance included in its brest which substance is that spirituous matter which is never idle but alwayes imployed about Generations and Vivifications which may here be properly called the Earth because the proper and vertuous substance of the Earth is that alone that by proper corporation generates all Bodies according to individual Idea's as I have described it in this Ode out of which I shall take what is convenient for my purpose L'esprit porte sur la sace De ceste indigeste masse L'en virounant tout autour Feit separer la matiere Pesante de la legiere Et la noire nuict du sour Puis de l'humeur a masse Le corps plus pesant froid Feit la roundeur compasse Que d'un serrement estroit L'eau ou l'air contrebalance D'un poids si ferme egal Que sans souffâ—ir mesme mal Ne peur choir en decadence Puis versant l'ame an dedans Et les semences du monde La feit nurisse feconde Du ciel des feux ardens When yet the world did in a Chaos lie The Spirit full of fiery heat did flie About the surface of this shapeless Mass And so fomented it that what erst was One lump without all form did now begin By Separation which was wrought therein By this same Spirit a multitude to make Of Bodies and likewise of forms to take A number almost numberless and now Light things ascend and heavy things below The centre seek to pass the day breaks out And all the ponderous reliques press about The centre where staying themselves they make A round terraqueous Globe which nought can shake Out of its place for 't is on every side Equally balanced and cannot slide Seeing no over-weight presses one part More then another hereto the Stars impart Their influences which by life and seed Make this great Nurse all things to keep and breed And seeing in this Universal Separation that which is more fiery and subtile chuses the higher Seat and that which is gross and massy the lowest it follows that Celestial Bodies are immortal as being most remote and separate from all immund Dregs and that they are crooked or excavated into rotundity because they flew up at once for which cause also Nature desires a round form for eternal things as being most perfect and indeficient and on the contrary it follows that Terrestrial things must be obnoxious to corruption and death because contraries are conjoyned in their composition to wit Elements of contrary qualities wherewith the impurities or dregs of the first matter were mixed which were not created pure as some imagine for then all that proceeded from them would be immortal nay more there could have been no Generation in the World for without contrariety of qualities and impurities there had been no alteration nor mutation of forms but all would have had one face without distinction all things would have remained equally pure and subtile and consequently without all ornament yea that I may speak freely there had been neither matter nor World created It was therefore necessary That the subtile substance should be mixed with gross dregs for where nothing but purity is there is no action because there can be no action where there is no patient seeing what is pure hath no power over what is as pure nor impure over as impure But Nature being always occupied in separating
touches which greatly hinders the light and splendor of Nature which always desires purity and freedom from darkness as appears by that intense splendor in perfect Bodies a token of their purity seeing others more immerged in impurity are more obscure as Metals perfect and imperfect precious Stones demonstrate But if we would avoid long peregrinations and according to the oracles advice terminate our curious journeys in our selves by seeking out the causes of our Diseases we should easily finde them derived from those infected fumes that obscure the light of our sanity and thence desume a manifest sign of what is wrought within us for a sound Man because of the internal clarity of his natural disposition hath a cleer and lively coloured aspect but a sick Man from the first onset of his disease is pale and plumbeous his native vigour perishing and decaying and all these mutations proceed from the fumes of sulphureous and excrementitious Adustion and Inflammation which extend themselves thorow all the members and by mediation of the pores infect the whole Body This paleness may also proceed from Nature feeling her self aggravated with a disease and thereupon revoking all the pure and good Blood inwards that mustring up their forces she may better oppose her enemy or sustain his assaults and upon this occasion the external parts are destitute of their clarity and in this conflict the external parts remain as it were dead like Earth tend to obscurity because Earth wherein this battle is begun is naturally black as on the contrary Fire is by Nature clear and white The Earth then on its part being spisse and obscure begets blackness and sulphureous fuliginous and smoaky Adustion begets obscurity wherefore both cause corruption destruction and ruine and besides these two nothing in the world procures universal ruine neither is any inferiour Body exempted from these evils save Gold and precious Stones which Nature hath brought to what perfection she can And so Death is to other Bodies a perpetual enemy seeking how to destroy them but Nature as a careful Mother how to preserve her works who hath armed two potent and nimble Champions to help them and withstand the Adversaries fury one whereof is Fire the expugner of sulphureous Adustion the other Water the expeller and driver of Terrestrial dregs And as Nature is ingenious and subtile in all her operations so is Art indued with equal subtilty and industry And there 's no other way to Separation instituted by Nature from the beginning but these two which Nature her self hath trodden from the non-age of the Universe whose first seeds void of form and confusedly mixed in a Chaos were dissolved in Water and by the Spirit of God the first Mover moving upon them divided and distinguished whence the Separation of light from darkness proceeded as also of distinct forms from confusion of generations from barreness and of death from life and if things in the first commixtion were thus confused as impure with pure Excrements with Substance Earth with Heaven and life with death all were without action power essence and life and the whole confusion useless An Artist therefore considering this and observing That nothing can exert its vertue till the confusion of its purity and impurity be separated he takes Water and Fire for his Helpers and follows Natures copy whose operations he should observe with all curiosity especially in generating Metals which are by so much the perfecter by how much they are more digested in the bowels of the Earth This sentence is then irrefragable That Water and Fire are the sole general and principal means of Separation but the composition of things being various and one thing yielding with more ease then another we must also act variously upon them yet so as not to vary from the plain path that nature has delineated For adustion and unctuous Sulphur making a body inflammable and infective may be extracted one way out of one body and terrestrial feculency another way in others Calcination and Sublimation were invented to purge adustion but Distillation and Dissolution to remove terrestrial feculency and Descension for the conservation of weak and easily inflammable bodies and all these are either effected by fire as Calcination Sublimation and Descension or by water as Distillation and Dissolution But because both the Books of ancient and modern writers speak at large of these things I shall not further labour in their explication because I can adde nothing new nor yet any ornament or facility to them it may suffice if I adde any thing definitively and known to my self in general and that is that Calcination is invented for your overcoming of hard and rebellious things and for continuity and valid and firm composition which hinders division and admits not of easie separation and hence four conveniencies arise the combustion of impure and stinking Sulphur the easie separation of superfluous and extraneous earthiness the fixation of the internal Sulphur and more prompt dissolution For it is natural to fire to consume those adustible parts which are not of the essence of a substance to facilitate the division and rejection of terrestrial excrements to fix radical Sulphur and to multiply salt in bodies which alone doth afterwards admit dissolution by water I say therefore that Calcination agrees onely to bodies that because of their continuity scarcely yield for spirits and volatile things which flye away by fire cannot be calcined unless some fixing thing be added which is repugnant to their nature Seeing there is no other end in Calcination then to extract salts wherein the better part and secret vertue of bodies consist to which that corruptive adustion adheres which in sublimation we suffer ro evaporate and flie away as useless that the remaining substance may be better freed from terrestrial dregs and easier educed by fire to purification and stability It is true also that sublimation requires some intension of fire but that happens then chiefly when the things to be sublimated are more profoundly mixed with the dregs of some other fixed body that they may more pertinaciously hold their terrestrial impurities and this kind of sublimation is most secure save when we work upon subjects that have their dregs naturally more fixed Descension hath a two fold use one is to extract Oyl out of vegetables without combustion the other to cleanse fusibles bodies before they be made volatile and these are the three kindes of separation made by fire now we shall speak a little of the other two Distillation and Dissolution made by water and the former of these is made by inclination and straining that the limpidity of bodies may with water come forth into the water of dissolved vegetables for that same that 's made by an Alembick appertains to the order of sublimations which is effected by elevation and not by ablution And though some account this for an indifferent and but a mean way yet I say it should not be rejected but much
esteemed as that principally which Nature uses in her operations and which she establishes as the sole medium for the separation of terrestrial impurity by which also many things are brought to the height of their perfection being by this kind of distillation elevated and sublimated to their purity Whence some Philosophers have call'd it a secret sublimation The second operation by water to wit dissolution is effected by moist and moderate heat as Horse-dung Saint Maries Bath the smoak of boyling water or by infusion in water or else by inhumation in moist places and the end of all these is one to wit the reduction of the things calcined into water that by this liquefaction the terrestrial matter may by straining settle in the bottom of the vessel but this subtile practise and all of the like kind should be reiterated for if any would by continual calcination separate the more simple parts of the compound and reduce to salt what hath the essence of salt he thereby creates much loss for the intemperate and continual violence of the fire will sublimate and evaporate a great part of that which is with such labour sought so that nothing will remain but a small quantity of the soluble matter with a great deal of dregs and besides that matter may by long abode in the fire be made into glass it is better therefore to flie to frequent reiterations then violate nature by the excess of any precinitancy I found such an inconvenience once in calcinating common Chrystal which while I desired to purge from its excrements and by long ignition to reduce to its true essence I found both it and its excrements made into glass and thence useless for my purpose for though Chrystal be clear lucid and transparent yet in Calcination it first emits black and then violaceous fumes as also stinking and sulphureous odours which sufficiently attest its excrementitious earthiness as also white fumes following after the true Homogeneity of its substance which remains clear and fluid in small quantity till it become true chrystalline Salt yea by the duration of these last reiterations its ingrateful sent is changed into a most delicate one like that of violets-powder By these reiterations of Calcinations two more conveniences do yet arise One is that the thing calcined by assuefaction to the fire brings stability and subtilty to the Medicaments as I said before The other that a body often dissolved acquires easie penetration and ready ingression as also more potent strength to change the state of the patient from sickness to sanity from weakness to vigour from declination to restauration and perfect health and these are the ordinary ways of all separations which have no other scope then the purging of pure substances from excrements and elevating of their terrestrial grossness to a fiery purity and from imperfection to perfection Which Hermes hints at when he says that earth must be separated by fire and the subtile from the gross which he says must be done with great care and animadversion For when he speaks of the preparation of the universal Spirit after its terrification and opens the way to the preparation of all individuals he would signifie that there is something in this earth which can scarce be retained and conserved and this is a light and volatile spirit which is kept by the temperament of fire But on the contrary it will easily flie away with the separable and more copious volatile part if in the operation temperate fire and a good method be not used with much patience where the Artist should observe this rule with all diligence that there are three distinct Sulphurs whereof two are separable to wit the external which perishes by Calcination and Dissolution and the internal which vanishes onely by decoction and the third is fixed which is properly the Sulphur of nature and the proper subject of its substance whereunto Philosophers give the name of Agent Fixed-grain or Element of fire As to the external Sulphur it is that first volatile and adustible water for it is plainly extraneous and the first nutriment of fire but the internal is more rooted in and united to the substance and therefore yields not save to intent and continued heat and therefore it assumes all colours before it egrede beginning first with black which is the prime sign of earthiness adustion and corruption and the antecessor of putrefaction and corruption and then passes through other middle colours till at length it put on whiteness which is the airy colour and then ascends to a fiery colour or redness in which the power of art and dominion of fire is terminated and beyond which there is no progress Which thing the Poets fabulously concealed under the unconstant form of Proteus who turned himself into various monstrous forms that he might affright those that would captivate him This variety of colours proceeds from the internal Sulphur the true author and producer of all tinctures and varieties which are by Nature or Art observed in any subject These colours may be also distinctly noted in the decoction of the first universal Subject as I have above said That it produced them in my operations and first whiteness presents it self and then Natures Sulphur appears which Geber says is white without and red within for redness immediately follows this whiteness without all help save the continuation and augmentation of Fire whence one Philosopher said His Stone was a Gold-Ring covered with Silver I would briefly insert these few words about colours not that I would presume to teach the preparations and observations which I know necessary for the perfecting of that great and so much praised Philosophers Elixir but onely that I may shew the curious Disciples of learned Medea which induced by profound and ingenious inquisition seek to enter the secrets of these mysterious Physicks what Sulphurs must be rejected and what must be retained in all things I hope I shall spend that time well which I have substracted from my houshold-affairs if I restore any vigour or spark of life to that languishing part of Natural Philosophy which envious Men have buried in the Sepulchre of Calumny under the odious title of abusive Transmutation and falsifying of Metals though ignorance onely stop their eyes from discerning this true mystery which they load with opprobrious contumelies and injurious words grounding their malice onely on the malicious lies of impudent dullards who run about Cities sell smoak and obnubilate their false Sophistications under the coat of this fair Virgin deceiving the eyes of the too credulous Commonalty with their pigments and by their Syrenical and fraudulent Speeches precipitating curious Inquirers into Scylla or Charybdis CHAP. 4. Of the Spirits ascent into Heaven and descent into the Earth THe Almighty Creator of all things foreseeing from the beginning that infection and corruption growing with things compounded of Body and Spirit would move continual and intestine wars he opposed a remedy to this dissention whereby the
one may be conserved and the other not destroyed and seeing the Spirit and Substance were included in a Body and the Body immerged in corruption it was impossible that corruption should act upon and prevail over the Body and yet the Spirit placed in both should be kept free and incur no danger but rather that with the Body it should yield to deaths Tyranny which alwayes intends Natures destruction and the prostitution of all individuals which thing needs no proof but appears sufficiently manifest from the natural and sometimes the immature end of Animals Vegetables and Minerals which we see every day by their corruption when the Body being dead the Spirit must undergo the same fortune that is the vertue that enlivened it is annihilated but because the prime Opificer would be admirable in all his works of his meer goodness and love to Mankinde who from the beginning he predestinated to be the Instrument of his Glory and to whom he subjected whatever was admirable in the Creation for his Commodity I say he gave certain expedient Remedies whereby he might not onely purifie and perfect the things created but also preserve and arm himself against the assaults of mortal corruption Knowing then that the two parts of Man were one created in another to wit the Spirit in the Body and that the Body would be continually infected by corruption and by sensuality drawn and allured to intemperance which infers the true corruption and weakning of all the members he foresaw that the Spirit inhabiting like a Guest in the Body could not be exempted from its contagious depravation and we ordinarily see That Men given to excess of intemperance and sensuality accustom themselves to ill manners and take liberty in all corruption both of Minde and Spirit neither regarding Love nor Fear to God Honor or Respect to the World nor Piety to themselves nor Charity towards their Neighbours So that it is impossible if they be thus bound to inquinations in death but their Spirits must undergo punishment as they have participated of pleasure Seeing moreover all mankinde by the fall of our first Parent obnoxious to death and thence every Man inevitably to incur total destruction and perdition he mitigated or rather redintegrated this Misery by an admirable Remedy far exceeding our capacity for knowing Man by his Spirit and his Body to participate of Heaven and of Earth the Remedy also he made to partake of Heaven and Earth which is competible solely to our onely Lord Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ who descended from Heaven into the Earth and by a mystery incomprehensible by us and common sense was miraculously made Man without the abdication of his God-head because our health could not come from Earth alone corruption reigning there but it was necessary that the Water should come from above where the Fountain of purity is he therefore came down that he might dwell in us and with us and conclude us within the terms of justice and temperance regenerating us to newness of life by the mutation of our Spirit and Body and mortifying in us our corruptions and sins and restoring us to the study of purity of vertue which could not have been effected save by him alone the extream of both Natures for he is God-Man that he might conjoyn superiour with inferiour things which were dis-joyned by the incomparable distance of life and death purity and corruption The Earth doubtlesly received this inestimable treasure far exceeding its merit by a medium that cannot be comprehended from which he again ascended into Heaven by the Water of purification and Fire of the Spirit without accidents and corporal passions though he deposed not his Body but retained it incorruptible and glorious having acquired immortality by death who shall again descend from his Fathers right-Hand into the Earth after the Universal conflagration to renew the World and make a Separation betwixt the good destined to life and the evil condemned to death See now how well the Omnipotent Father the Father of all compassions consulted for Mans good to whose Body joyned with his Soul he gave an equal Preserver whom he sent from Heaven that he might be born on Earth and whom by the light of Nature we ought to seek Seeing Man was therefore endued with Reason and Judgement that he might acknowledge and comprehend his great gifts but Man created heavenly for the indagation of this benefit as too forgetful of his birth lays out that noble and divine Light within him in searching out frivolous and transitory vanities and not in the pursuit of solid wisdom and verity Briefly he had rather follow the inclination of his Terrestrial Geniture then Divine and Celestial Wisdom which he neglects as a thing indifferent and casually sent to him from above Wherefore the Root of Mankinde is as it were extinguished before it grow out except some few who have had better Stars and more favourable Aspects in their Nativity they desiring the possession of transitory goods more then the attainment of Divine and precious Gifts which our fecund Mother Nature hath publickly and in all places fixed for the conservation of life hurt rather then helped by their abundance immerged in mortal corruption And it is apparent That those that are of a higher Spirit though they look upon the fulgour and splendor of those Mundane Riches as no way despicable yet they will not rest in this surface but seek to Divine Vertue occluded in the Centre which hath indeed been cause of great errors both in Medicine and Philosophy to such as destitute of true light groape at and in the dark pass by both Recalling then my mind to the clear light by whose guidance we may attain that salutary and best remedy which God ordained particularly for the conservation of mankinde and for the obtaining of Celestial benediction I shall endeavor with all humility and requisite sincerity not as a Divine but as a Disciple of Wisdoms followers to adumbrate my conceptions in a rude style which the lovers of verity may accept gratefully if they finde them rational and pleasing I say then that all understanding communicated to any man from man alone is uncertain and confused because man is ordinarily loaden with ignorance and slow resolutions but that which he receives from the univerial Light is clear and immoveable For to know absolutely is to understand a thing by its first causes and there is no certitude in second causes till we come to their original wherefore we cannot know the Nature of a Species unless we foreknow its Genus neither can we know the Nature of Microcosmes which are almost infinite unless we first find out the Nature of the Macrocosme that gives them being Man likewise cannot be known without the precedent cognition of the world whose effigies he is nor yet the great world unless we know whence and how it was made For how shall one know a man whose principle is nothing but a small deformed mucilage
or how shall a man know him that is born unless he know those that begot him and here I mean not the second but the first Parents to wit heaven and earth and unless a man understand the first creation of these how shall he know them as an Embryo in a womb which is nothing but the congregation of a certain humour which is afterwards formed to the example of its parents and so in progress till it become perfect so the Heaven Earth and all that is therein that is all this great world is like an Embryo in the Chaos whence none can have any light unless he consider the first rudiments and progress of its distinction and formation Let us therefore first go to the Fountain and Spring that we may thence trace the rivulets that flow from it and know them and by examples of forms judge of things formed I say therefore that the prime and absolute creator who is as a point whence all proceed and an inexhaustible fountain whence infinite rivulets issue hath a Nature proper and particular to himself which is to conserve as well as produce the whole world for it is the property of a good Author to produce things and when he hath procreated them to conserve and defend them This first Effect which is Creation is a secret that we are ignorant of we understand it not but by the affinity or likeness it hath to generations But the second is open and manifest to such at least as are illuminated elect and born of the Spirit but not to such as are sons of the flesh lest precious pearls should be trod upon and cast to swine Jesus Christ our Lord hath perfected the former and more excellent and taught us commanding us to imitate him in all good works whereof he hath set us an ensample For Nature walks always in the same tract and never forsakes her ways As therefore the universal Parent or Conserver consulted by his providence the common conservation of all things from the beginning of the world So Nature from the beginning had her intentions and was always occupyed in continual action about productions For as it was necessary that the safety of the Spiritual part of man should descend from above so is it likewise as necessary that the safety of the Body should come from the same Fountain because from below where the seat and habitation of corruption is neither life nor safety can proceed For what end do the Heavens the perpetual Fountain of Restauration and Perfection by the influence of their vertues flow upon the Body of the Earth which the benevolent Stars with their benign Aspects sympathizing with the afflicted society of mankinde do daily graciously prosecute and affect but to generate in her a durable and enlivening Spirit which in the Womb of this fecund mother assumes a Body and manifests and dilates its faculties through all the parts of the world distributing them to each creature according to its exigency and hereupon do the particular powers depend which we must know by their effects in Herbs Beasts Stones and other things which have drawn their proprieties from this general Spirit and do miraculously conserve us and other creatures And as it pleased God to enrich man with the perfection of his own Son according to the extension of the humane Nature and yet he would not have any one contaminated with sins and iniquities to seek remedies and health from man but from himself the true Fountain whence all perfection flows so also Nature the perfect observer of the Divine will and imitator of his works hath not setled the perfect vertue of curation and restauration in Herbs and particular Creatures but would have us seek it precisely in the Centre whence this is communicated to Creatures to wit in the Earth where this enlivening Spirit is generated for if simples are indued with the vertue of curing restoring nourishing and conserving how much more hath the abundant dispensor of it whence all these receive it but that the Earth is the treasury and dispensor of these vertues daily experience gives us suffient reasons for she must needs possess them else she could not give them It is therefore admirable that so many egregious men should spend their time in drawing their waters from simple rivulets far removed from their pure Fountain and running through a muddy current and not go to the Fountains head I do not in the mean time contemn special Medicaments but I would that Generals were more sought after and particulars not neglected for though a General Medicament might salve every Sore yet particulars merit commendation especially in external superficiary Diseases when the Centre of sanity is not afflicted That therefore I may return to my Scope I say again the Earth is the Matrix wherein the Heavens beget that Spirit that Nourisher Restorer and Conserver of Bodies which alone gives solidity and perfect cure and how this so potent and efficacious a Spirit should be found and taken all wise men should direct their cogitations to so useful an inquisition that they might observe the exemplary Steps which Nature paces in perfecting her intentions and hold this for a rule though God infinitely exceeding Nature is not bound to natural reason no more then a Monarch to the Laws himself prescribes which yet his subjects observe without inquiring why he prescribed them And who hath more faithfully and successfully followed this example then Hermes Trismegistus who after the deluge was first as some say that opened to men the mysteries of the perfect knowledge of God and exactly explicated Natures secrets for besides that Angel-like in his Poemandrum he explains Divinity where he manifests the Doctrine of the Creation of the great and small world its beginning progress and duration he also continues his holy Philosophy with the same hand in his Asclepium declaring with a spirit and voice prophetical that the regeneration of man should be wrought by the Mediation of the Son of God indued with humane flesh he also industriously touches the same Scope in his Tabula Smaragdina where he saith that as all things in the world were made out of one subject by mediation of one God so his Magistery which is the chief and general Medicine may be perfected and compleated by adaptation onely which adaptation is nothing else but a Glass where we may see Divine Meditation aenigmatically represented to shew that Nature necessarily follows the steps of her Master He also attests in other Books That the Author of Regeneration should descend from Heaven and become Man and live among Men for their edification He says also in his Tabula which he left as the last Testament and Testimony of the excellency of his thoughts That this general Spirit the Conserver of Bodies shall descend from Heaven to wit from the Sun and Moon which in his Poemandrum he calls The principal Rulers in this Mundane Monarchy to assume a Body in the Earth which he
calls the Spirits Nurse by the Mediation of the Air in whose Belly he shall be carried because the Celestial Influences cannot be communicated to the Earth unless the Air which is like an Intercessor carry them to it and as the Divine Restorer and Protector of our Souls in the assumption of humane Flesh deposed nothing of his Divinity so saith he the Universal Spirit shall retain and keep all its Vertue entire when it is turned into Earth that is when it assumes a Terrestrial Body God also willed his own Son and our Redeemer in his assumed Humanity be as it were regenerated by and with the Water of Baptism and Fire of the Holy Spirit not that he needed any such purgation but because he was to converse with Men contaminated with corruption that he might in all things yield himself an example of Renovation and Purification giving Men a visible and ample Testimony That according to the Flesh he was of the same Nature with them not contaminated or corrupted but obnoxious to passion and equally mortal as they In like manner our fecund Mother Nature willed her first-born though pure in his Centre That he should be regenerated by Water and Fire that is by Separation of the Terrestrial from the fiery part the spisse from the subtile and the impure from the pure which Hermes also aimed at when he said That the Earth should be separated from Fire for what God hath conjoyned Man should not separate but onely the impure and gross from the subtile and pure by Fire And besides this Sense which first offers it self to our Intellects there is yet another more occult meaning for seeing by the Separation of Earth from Fire he means that that 's gross from that that 's subtile he seems to hint that we should separate the natural qualities of these two Elements by detracting the moist frigidity mixt with heavy Terrestrial things without which that cold cannot subsist and by putting on hot siccity which is of the Nature of Fire and consequently light and spiritual For which cause he adds That it must ascend from Earth to Heaven that is from imperfection to perfection for Paracelsus calls Fire the Firmament and as nothing can attain perfection unless it first depose its imperfect gross and mortal bark wherein this cold quality abounds the cause of all mortification as heat is of life so also prudent Nature observes this Rule That each subject should sustain and pass the obsure blackness of death and expect the cleer and candid renovation of life and immortality that is impassible essence whereon neither Fire nor corruption hath any power And assuredly the acquisition of this life by death is naturally exercised by all Creatures continually for all Sperm or Seed of Animals is mortified in some Matrix and of Vegetables in the Earth before any specification can be made But if this rule takes place in the members by how much may we more exactly observe and directly imitate it in the head and if the life acquired by mortification be of any duration how much more shall that be perpetual which is principal Jesus Christ taught these things by similitude of a Grain which he says cannot fructifie unless it first die signifying the mystery of his Resurrection which his Death should precede for he willed Death that he might rise to a glorious and perpetual Life therein not onely giving example to men but expressing the whole Idea of Nature That divine and learned Ermite Morienus Romanus who is often quoted by modern and natural Philosophers avers the same of the fixed Grain whereto Nature hath given power to perfect Metals for he saith Unless it putrefie and grow black it cannot be perfected and compleated but returns to nought I have taken liberty to say thus much that I may teach the younger sort how the Creator should be acknowledged by simple Creatures and because the vulgarity of Men begs this knowledge from remoter things acting as they do who seek the perfection of Sciences from the Scholars of the lowest Form whereas they should require it from the best Directors and Doctors I would excite them by these natural conceptions that they would convert the principal endowments of their Souls to the search of the general principle and that in more exquisite things such as impart life and preservation to all mortal Creatures Mortification then necessarily precedes all entrance into life and principally in this Spirit the first-born of Nature when it assumed a Body for else no Man could separate it from Body which hinders its Regeneration to Life and Pacification of its Essence not as though by combustion and destruction it lost its Body in Death nor yet by Putrefaction but so that in Germination the Putrefaction of Seeds annihilates not that which is corporified in them for which cause in the Exaltion of Mercury or the Universal Spirit after the first degree which is made by Separation all that 's corporeal and spiritual becomes volatile because the sublimatory vertue therein overcomes the fixing faculty but the fixed part afterwards retains the volatile with it being helped by the action of heat which augmenting the power of the two nobler Elements destroyes the power of the two weaker which Hermes hints at in a certain Treatise by a plumous Bird detained with a Bird without Feathers And Nicholaus Flumellus by two Dragons one with and another without Wings But that I may not longer fold my self in these Daedalean Labyrinths see we not all Vegetables encrease and elevate themselves upwards by vertue of this volatile Spirit which as I said before would carry them higher towards the place whence it came whereto it hath an appetite but that it is detained by its proper Earth and corporal Mass wherein some fixed matter resides But lest some not sufficiently accustomed to Philosophical terms should think we contradict our selves I will here explicate my self I say then That I mean not by this volatile Spirit that which I before called volatile and separable Sulphur for that is rather the Author of Corruption then Growth but that most simple part of the primaeve vapour which never loses it s subtily whose Nature is to be elevated and tend to perfection for to sublimate is properly and Philosophically no more then to perfect and exalt matters from imperfection to perfection As therefore this Mercury hath an elevable so hath it a stable substance the first is naturally innate in it the second is in its centre or power yet it cannot compass its effect without the help of Art And that I may shew more plainly in what ways Nature proceeds in her operations I think it convenient to add a little about the causes and manner of Fixation Repeating therefore that indubitable Axiome I alledged in the beginning of this Book as perpetually observed in the Worlds Constitution to wit That all that hath life hath also some duration and that nothing is produced under the cope of Heaven which
form whereof it was before and wheresoever it is cast there will be plenty of it always after Not as if it were generated of the Earth but in the Earth through whose parts it creeps extending it self continually by multiplication and vegetation which the Ancients denote by the Serpent which Moses says creeps on the Earth feeds it self on the dust thereof and this caused the Cabalists to call him the prince of Sepulchres because he devours and consumes the Bodies there interred not that dead Bodies or the earth are his aliments but only the seats where he is fed and nourished This is the place where he is moved turned and twines without ceasing whereof Medea admonishes Jason where she says in Epist Heroid Ovidij Pervigil ecce draco squamis crepitantibus horreus Sibilat torto pectore verrit humum Lo here the Dragon with his horrid Scales Doth watch and hiss and plow the very dales Which Rythmes a French Author thus expresses Voy le dragon veillant de fureur sorcene Qui d'escaile crugaten a le corps entourne Dont le gosier sifflant fumee feu deserre Et qui par replis lors va baliant la terre De sa large poitrine en la poudre imprimant Les sineux siallons qu'il trace incessament Behold the scaly swelling Dragon lurking Who always listens with a watchful ear Who knits his brows and never shuts his eyes here But him that sees his cust tongues teeth afrights With horror whose wide throat emits such flames As do infect the Air with blackest fumes Behold his many twinings which he deep Impresses in the earth whilst he doth creep And plough the ground with his broad brest whilst he Returns in the same tract continually I adduce these two Considerations not onely to shew how Mercury must be sought but also to confirme that that which is fixable in it is nothing else but the enlivening essence which fixed in due manner perpetuates and keeps life in all things it enters by its purity expelling Excrements and by its perfection perfecting imperfect things The end of Fixation both natural and artificial is Perpetuation and Conservation which are effected by the Mediation of that Tincture which Mercury acquires by this Fixation for that Tincture is Life and Life is nothing else but that which opens and colours the Body with such a Tincture as shews it to be vital and perishes with its death Nature therefore colours Blood wherein life consists with a red Tincture and when the Blood is clearer and more lively red the Body is more sound fair and vigorous as on the contrary when the Blood is dense black adust with choler or changed into a false colour the Body is pained and sick within and by discoloration gives Testimony thereof without We may observe the same in Vegetables whose lively vigour consists in greenness which being changed we say it is turning or declining towards death The perfection also or imperfection of Metals is discernable by their colours Gold is indued with a magnetical vertue which by the splendent fulgor of its tincture draws man's earth after it in which Nature spends all her forces but leaves the victory to Arts industry which by graduation to the haight which it adds to its natural splendor makes it far more fulgent insomuch that it 's called the Terrestrial Sun An Artist then may exalt the golden colour to the height of obscure redness by which augmentation imperfect Metals in a certain degree may by projection of this artificial Tincture be brought to the height of perfection so that we see this golden colour introduced by Nature into this Metal is onely the way to that redness wherein the completion of perfect Vertue lies for which cause this Metal though far excelling others can communicate no perfection nor conservation to humane Bodies as a thousand Jugglers and Sluggards in Physicks promise by their Sophistical Fusions and Phantastical Confections But if more curious Artists work upon this subject they may make it acquire such a degree of inseparable redness that by the excess of its heat it shall work miracles and yet it shall consume nothing but superfluities and shall conserve and multiply the substance of Bodies though Philosophers say That its heat as much exceeds our common fires as common fires do innate heat in Animals Paracelsus in his Treatise of Tinctures extols that highly which is extracted out of Gold by Spirit of Wine and attributes many singular Vertues to it as also to that that 's made of Antimony and Coral before which he yet seems to prefer the Tincture of Mercury which he says may by perfect Fixation be brought wholly to a Tincture so that it will penetrate Bodies because of its most subtile purity where I think he means not that vulgar but Philosophical Mercury wherein Art perfecting Nature hath wrought these two effects to wit perfect Tincture and compleat Fixation Tincture then in proper locution is the pure substance of things and Body is nothing but an Excrement which is also manifest in that Bodies after the Separation of their Tincture are useless without vertue and corruptible no otherwise then a carcase without life colour or motion Tincture may then be called the scope of Fixation it attaining by its permanency in fire a conservative faculty in those Bodies to which it is applied But the manner of attaining this degree of Fixation in which the Completion of the whole work consists is no other then that fugitive and light things be prudently kept in the Fire that they may be brought into assuefaction with it that they may endure most violent heat And for this cause good Authors commend Patience to their Disciples as proceeding from God but Precipitancy as from the Devil Take this for an infallible Rule That unless Calcination go before nothing can be fixed and that this should be done by conjoyning the fixable Spirit with something of a convenient Nature that may retain it in the Fire of Calcination that by this means it may accustome it to sustain heat by little till it can endure the ultimate augmentation of Fire which infers Fixation And the Reason why we must proceed with such discretion is because if we should too readily precipitate this operation the special Spirituality which is the Mother of this Tincture would flie away and leave the Body without any impression of the tingent Vertue so that a new Spirit must of necessity be given to this dead Head before the desired colour can be introduced which is one of the Secrets of this Chymical Art for it is the Spirit and no other thing that colours by mediation of Fire and this Tincture compleated and exalted in our Mercury should be elevated to the height of perfection that as Hermes speaks it may ascend into Heaven and when it hath sustained all mortal torments receive a new life that is after it hath passed the darksome straits of Putrefaction it may be elevated to
seeing it filled with horrid Monsters they have been so confounded as to leave this perillous Path and forsake their enterprise As Poliphilus hath by a most ingenious pencil expressed whose generous and undaunted courage sleighting those common terrors hath effected so much that both the sides of this black dark Word lay open to light and by whose manuduction you may notwithstanding all obstacles arrive safe and and sound at the delicious and grateful habitation of Lady Polia shut up in the rich Temple of Vesta This I can assert for indubitable that the way he held is open to all but all have not that Ariadne's Clew that he had to extricate himself out of this labyrinth neither is every one a Theseus that he can overcome the Minotaure It is certain that Nature like a loving Mother proposes and offers this precious Treasure of life to all and that God our Universal Father keeps open the Gate of this fatall Cavern for the commodity of all men for the descent to Hell is easie but then again to ascend to Heaven hic labor hoc opus est Stay coach-man here 's a straw First then that splendent Branch Dedicated to the infernal Juno must be found out of which Virgil writes Accipe que peragenda prius latet arbore opacae Aureus foliis lento vim ine ramus Junoni inferne dictus sacer hunc tegit omnis Lucus obscuris claudunt convallibus umbrae Sed non ante datur tellures operta subire Auricomos quam quis decerpserit arbore faetus Hoc sibi pulchra suum ferri Proserpina munus Instituit primo acculso non defi cit alter Aureus simili frondescit virga metallo Ergo alte vestiga oculis rite repertum Carpe manis namque ille volens facilisque sequetur Si te fata vocant aliter non viribus ullis Vincere nec duro poteris convellere ferro First see what you must do the golden tree Which to th' infernal Juno we decree Lies hid under a grove in a deep vale And now you may not pass within the pale Of th' Earths deep Cabinet until you have Snatch'd from this tree her off-spring which to grave Proserpina you must present the tree That gave this fruit will not long fruitless be For loe another golden off-spring follows Fix your eyes here and in your hand retain then What you do finde if th' fates do favour now You vanquish but if not no force will do If therefore Nature be sollicitous in hiding these things lest they should be indifferently prostrated to all or Hogs get to the honey-pots no wonder if Ancient and Modern Philosophers have invented so many aenigmatical Figures and hidden Fables to cover and cloath this Science with For they know well enough that ceremonious Nature would never have hid her self under so many different Forms and Species but have appeared naked but that her Venerable Secrets would thereby incur that contempt which alway accompanies common things For which cause I also in this Treatise use the same Solennity and Taciturnity lest I should undergo the same peril that he did who published the Mysteries of the Elysian Goddesses which should have been kept Secret and Chaste and not like common Harlots exposed to publike abuse And whether I have spoken conveniently to my own purpose or no such as have made progress in this search may better judge for experience is the best Dame In the mean time I hope none will give a hard interpretation or pass a bad sentence on me because I have compared Natural and Chymical operations with Divine and Christian Mysteries wherewith they have some conformity For by this application I have no way profaned them but rather Celebrated their Excellences and pointed at that great care and testimony of our Creatour in ratifying the safety both of Body and Soul together Which reason moved one Author so that he wrote that the true Chymistry which Paracelsus calls Spagiry follows the Gospel foot by foot because by the help of this and fire Nature exerts her most potent faculties which Antient Philosophers as Brachmannus Gymnosophisters and all the Egyptians insinuate in their Theology For all the Magick of Paganism and all the fables of Poets signifie no more then what this Book Treats of which the most Learned and subtile Bracescus diligently examined though envious Toladanus writes the contrary after he was deceived in an experiment in this Art which he thought he had wresled from him by his importunity believing that the spume of Iron was the Philosophers Mercury because he asserted that it was extracted out of a vile Matter of small price which was cast into the streets not observing that the discreet Masters of this Art cloath their Matter with strange Vestments calling them by all the names of Metals in discriminately and yet without the least fraud for he that knows this matter knows also that it contains the seven Metals in it And I would gladly know whether they think Cosmopolita meant of the vulgar Steel when he sayes That Neptune shewed him under one Rock two Mynes the one of Gold the other of Steel The Man was too plain to harbour such frivolous conceits but he named his matter thus because of the conformity with polished Steel And Bracescus had played the part of a Fool and not a Philosopher if he had in one moment opened the whole mystery of his Secret in the acquiring whereof he had doubtlessly spent two thirds of his life But that I may add something to the explication of these Mythologies do we not plainly see That that ancient Demogorgon the Parent of all the gods or rather of all the Members of the World which they say inhabits the Centre of the Earth covered with a green and ferruginous Coat nourishing all kindes of Animals is nothing else but the universal Spirit which by God's command produced the Heaven out of the Chaos with the Elements and all things therein which it always hitherto sustains and enlivens for it truely took up its Habitation in the middle of the Earth as we have declared in the beginning of this Book where it sits as it were in its Throne and thence as from the Heart of some great Body and Seat of Life universal animates and nourishes all things and that green and ferruginous Coat is nothing but the surface of the Earth which is of a blackish and Iron-colour decked and variegated with divers coloured Herbs and Flowers Virgil perfectly skilled in all these mystical Secrets called this Spirit or Soul of the World Jupiter whom his Pastorer Damaeta invokes in his third Eclogue because as he saith all things are full of him And Pan that god of the Woods worshipped by Shepherds is taken for the same for besides that this word Pan signifies All he is also made the God of the Woods because the Greeks for the Governour thereof worshipped the Chaos which they otherwise call Hyle that is a Wood. Orpheus