been called by a divine spirit to a divine light who being drawn by true humility search into the wonders of nature and desire to communicate and make them known to their Neighbour who being filled with unfeigned and sincere love in the poverty of their knowledge and that little of the gifts of God granted to them are found faithfull in the least things but rather I exhort them to it and stir them up to go forward servently and in simplicity of heart follow that light which in this darksome way Ikindle in this little Book But they ought throughly to examine themselves without any flattery or self-love whether they are ordained for this Art Whether above all things he love God and his Neighbour as himself and whether he will freely help the poor because a drop of water and one mite seasonably given in ones poverty and from a true love to our Neighbour is as great in the sight of God and will have as great a reward as a large quantity of wine and money given by the rich If their life agrees with this rule they may go on to the full knowledge of nature and obtain their desired end They lose their labour and cost who with great carefulness rise early and sit up late and eat their bread in anxiety For the Lord bestows it on them that love him while they sleep who seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness that is he who patiently endures divine judgments and in all judgments though he be judged and his soul is grieved and even against nature is forced to endure yet always he acknowledges and understands that God is just good and mercifull and does acquiesce in his justice and desires not to enter into the Kingdom but by the fiery trial purification and obedience to the word his reason being made silent the passions of his mind tamed and subdued by a power supernatural to him all other things shall be added But I shall here speak no more of the holy silence nor use many words of the nature of this Mystery but will set upon the thing it self with the help of God And because I am certain that the wise will observe their duty but the foolish shall get nothing I will begin after the finishing of this Prayer O God our Father thou Lord of every good thing thou who wouldst make all things by thy word who hast formed Man by thy wisedom that he should rule over every Creature which thou hast made give me wisedom which is always round about thy throne neither drive us back from thy face for we are thy Servants and the Sons of thine Handmaid weak and infirm and of few days full of errour and unconstant neither are we fit or able without thy help to render unto thee in this our office that talent which of thy bounty thou hast committed to us with that increase we ought All perfection is from thee and thy wisedom but there is no capacity or worth in us send unto us and enlighten us with thy wisedom which cometh from above send her with a ray from thy holy Heaven from the Throne of thy Glory send her that she may be with and labour with us that we may know thy will grant that she may lead us by her glory that the works of our hands may be accepted with thee for nothing can be accepted by thee that is not wrought by her in us and so it will come to pass that we shall see thy truth in thy creatures to be admired O Lord our Cogitations are full of error and doubts and darkness environs our judgment Send thy holy spirit from on high and enlighten us that we may always go in the right way that we may perform thy will to the honour of thy holy Name and prosit of our Neighbour through Jesus Christ Amen WHen that matter wherein Lucifer held his Reign and Center had with him and his Angels or out-going Powers put on the nature of burning and corroding fire by a too great and inordinate motion whereby he desited to exalt his light and render it equal with the Deity and from the nature of light was turned into obscure darkness There was progenerated from the light in the first place Air then from the Air a Mist and last of all from the Mist a Viscous Water And here doubtless this Water through the bitter vehement and stinging cold the light being taken from it and further and further would have departed had suffer'd the force and power of an horrible Coagulation unless God had a-new sent in a ray of his divine light for a new Center and conveyed it through the whole matter for the Devil shall no more be the Center of this World the agonizing matter perceiving the splendor and sweetness of this light began to awake The bitterness of the corrosive greedy and austere power moving thus strongly decreased and the stupified matter as it were in a fright began to conside in the form of a glutinous Water God would not that the whole Heaven Mansion and Kingdom or Matter wherein Lucifer reigned should be utterly destroyed which before the Fall had its word light and motion from him as from the Center For this Matter was not made such by its own will but by constraint in the ardent imagination of the overruling spirit or intelligence For this spirit did with force exercise his rule and magical power in the Matter From thence the sweetness of the light departing to its original left the corrosive darkness to the burning desire of the spirit and the most kind motion of the heat was changed by the horrible attraction and vehement compaction of the Cold. The serene face of Heaven did put on the sorrowfull countenance of the terrestrial Water and Waterish Earth But God willing to bring the Idea of the world which from eternity he had a knowledge of in his mind into figures began to make something new in which he could set forth the manifestation of himself and have complacency in it Therefore he began a new Creation and by his spirit with his word expanded the Matter and divided it into three which working together in one harmony an effluvium from one to one by one thing should be the beginning of all things yet so that one of those three cannot consist without the other two so there is made out of this one Chaos or viscous Water a fixed fluid and volatile Body Spirit and Soul Earth Water and Air. The fluid spirit is too unconstant the volatil soul too subtile the fixed body too gross to receive that infused power of the light to its motion But when from this threefold union a fourth generation ariseth there is the seed of love and the center of vertues and powers a center that cannot properly be named Water for it is a viscous Earth in which is the Water of Nature and yet it is not Earth because it floweth and maketh moist neither is it
Air because it may be handled and rests in stillness and yet it is Air Earth and Water together the birth of a triple union of Air Earth and Water The various Creatures arise from heat moving it self in the Animal Vegetable and Mineral Kingdom which thus from unity return again to triplicity and appear under the figure of Air Water and Earth Infinite is this process of Nature there is not a Materia whether Vegetable or Mineral can propagate and multiply its self unless its Seed be first made a viscous Water or is already such all the Animals are progenerated and procreated by such a Water in all vegetable Seeds that viscous whiteness appears before any thing can grow from it The very Minerals and Metals proceed from such a viscous Water and must of necessity return to it Thus without any addition in themselves they ought by the Artist to put on a better nature If any Animal Mineral or Vegetable arrive to a radical solution instantly will apppear either a viscous Water or Earth Therefore the ends of things do excellently agree with their beginnings But now in every viscous Water there lies hid intimately in the Center a hidden Center concentrated which I call by the name of the Salt of Nature This Salt is the Light of the World Every where where it fixes its seat it drives its circumferences to motion it does illuminate strengthen and uphold them in their motions But this very Salt without the Divine Spirit of Nature does adhere and is annexed to the invisible speaking of the Divine word and by this light is nourished and moved This is that Salt which Christ among all created things only caled good And it is that Spirit which ascends up into the Airy Heaven and which again descends which restrains the Winds and holds them in the Fists of its power which gathers together the Waters into their places This Spirit of Salt is the medium of all things by which the highest are knit with the lowest and keep in harmony From both the Natures both superiour and inferiour it hath nutriment in abundance and in like manner doth give and divide its plenty to all things By it and through its virtue Vegetables and Minerals do grow and by it the divine Power doth perform whatsoever he will in the Firmament in the Air the Earth the Sea and all in deeps By this he commands the Clouds to appear from the ends of the Earth This Spirit is the cause and beginning of the Lightning and the Clouds he commands the Winds to come from hidden places This Spirit is the Instrument by which God wills that terrible thundrings be heard from the Clouds For this cause the satness of the Earth is in it and wonderfull plenitude of benediction Without this nothing in nature can subsist It is found every where the poorest as well as the King seeks his nourishment from it and conservation of his vital Spirit O Lord how great and wonderfull and how many are the works of thy hands Thou hast ordained all things wisely The Earth declares thy goodness and fullness who sillest all things Praise ye the Lord. Hallelujah From this Salt if it be regenerated by an Artist a wonderfull and noble thing proceedeth which maketh every corrosive thing sweet every weak and infirm thing sound and strong This thing giveth both Riches and Health and in this life it deserves the name of a most pretious Treasure Neither is there a greater thing amongst visible things which exist in this time than this which sometimes the Lord bestows upon some men for a special cause It is a Type and Image of the Resurrection and Immortality and our Heavenly Father by the operations and existence of this Essence hath in great perspicuity made plain unto us the understanding of the highest Mysteries I have seen by this thing as through a Glass the Image of the Creation and the distribution and ordination of that Mass which they call the Chaos the amicable Seed or Effluvium of the 3 Principles the separation of that Seen into various forms I have also seen by this thing how the Eternal Word was made Flesh I have seen the internal splendour of his glorious light and the veil of the Humane Flesh by which as by a Cloud that glory was cover'd how he walked among the Pharisees doing many Miracles and because his appearance was in so mean a figure they inflicted on him the highest contempts and torments and last of all undergoing death he entred into the Sepulchre and with a glorious and clarified Body ascended up into Heaven and from thence how by his Spirit he freed his Brethren and Sisters from infirmities and how even to this day by the holy Effluvium of his light and tincture he flows into prepared and faithfull Souls and there makes all holy things holier and better and at length perfects them until the day of the universal and last Judgment and the time of the new World Great are the works of God he that sets his mind upon them will find his delight in them He hath left the monument of his wonders with us he who is for ever mercifull and kind Hallelujah But although this Salt as has bin said is every where and in all places according to number weight and measure every where the matter of every thing yet it cannot so easily be sound neither is it out of all things fit to all things He that desires to make Gold he ought to be carefull to go about it by Gold or the nearest matter to Gold say the more wise and it is their opinion that the change of any one thing into a better cannot proceed unless it be in its own species kind and likeness and so they have believed that Animai Vegetable and sharp powers avail nothing to the perfection of Metals but are altogether unprofitable but they affirm that every of the three Kingdoms as they call them is in its own nature separated and divided from the other This is a perverse opinion in him who desires to shew the way in which I will not goe But I say this that all things come grow and proceed from one root but the only diversity of the matter and motion causeth the diversity of the subjects One virtue and power filleth the universal orb of the Earth and Heavens and bringeth it self into forms and figures gross and subtile sweet and sour hard and soft Animal Vegetable and Mineral But I cannot at this time pass over this in silence that that Spirit and Universal Salt of Nature though it be nearest to the breath of the divine speaking and ministers to all things its increated power yet it can produce nothing new but is only made use of by the word of God sustaining and upholding all things for the sustentation conservation and motion of those works which sometime began to have their being by the alone word of God creating them Here those Doctors are to be
reproved who make that noted difference between the nature of Animals Vegetables and Minerals and feign as it were three Kingdoms of the things of Nature altogether unknown and never seen by her Priests and they daily cantradict themselves and the thing it self and evident experience speaks against them for they administer infinite mineral and metalline Medicines to an Animal or sick Man and themselves confess and say when these Medicines are prepared without fire or corrosive liquors that the sick much better and sooner recover their health from these than the others For healing is nothing else but the correction of the acid and degenerate spirit and because that which is corrupted cannot be corrected unless the corrector from its first essence radically enter into that which is corrected and inseparably unite it self with it all must of necessity grant unto me that the essence of Minerals and Metals may very well unite with an Animal nature and if they may in their first nature be united and be of the same essence it is necessary that the diversity and dissimilitude be only contingent Neither do all Metallicks nor Calx Vive produce so sudden and good an alteration to the spirit of Vitriol or Emetick Salt as Crabs-Eyes Shells and Bodies of that kind taken from the nature of Animals Aqua fortis will not touch on Gold unless Sal-armoniac or Salt of Urine be added to it The fat of Eares will augment the weight of Duccats if they have not the due and desired pondus others make use of new Horsedung to increase their weight or put them for some time under the soles of their Feet that their strong sweat might penetrate or tinge their substance Those of the East Countries have known how to make Gold coloured or flexible and to give to Copper the most elegant and durable colour of Gold by a certain animal fat and whoever will make trial with Man's dung or the dung of little Children in a due manner may in Silver in its separation from the Gold gain some grains of Gold if he proceed rightly Wheat bruised into most fine parts and stratified with finest lamens of copellated Silver put into the Fire in a cementary vessel exactly closed and made red hot and combust in the examen of Aqua fortis Gold will be left from the Silver New and fresh Butter by a simple manual is apt to extract the tincture of Corals from the stony nature That unconquered Talk mocking the vexations of the Alchymists and all Fire suffers it self to be dissolved into an oily substance by nothing so well as Vegetables but chiefly by Animals as I very well know The Oils and vo'atile Salts of Herbs extract the tincture of Sulphur Neither is it needfull here that I make a long Discourse of the virtues of Spirit of Salt and Oil of Tartar for their radical operations on Metals and Minerals is more or less sufficiently known to any one skilled in the Chymical Art But I think without Wine and Man can never any make a true perfect and genuine tincture How Grass Herbs and Bread gives food to the Creatures conserves them and makes them better and in them is changed into various matters is above spoken of It is a thing well known to Countrymen that Vegetables are made better and fatter by the dung and urine of their Beasts that seed on Vegetables Man himself to his own cost feels the vegetable and mineral virtues in his own Body and apparent dolours compell him oft-times even against his will to confess it The sand and gravel in the Reins must it not be confessed it is of a mineral nature or have they any other original than of the juices of Animals and Vegetables which Man feeds on Is it not certain that Gold has grown between the teeth of a man's Skull I my felt by the Grace of God prepare a matter out of Animals which in preparing it in a singular way for what I use it affords unto me one way Animals another way Vegetables again another way often using the same thing Minerals and Metals Argent Vive true Copper Vitriol Chrystal Glass of Saturn Lead and the viscous and glutinous first substance of Minerals All which this only one matter affords without the addition of any peregrine thing of it self and of its own only proper substance but I am too open and transgress the prescribed limits He that desires to know more let him in simplicity follow the simplicity of Nature I only propounded this to my self to shew in short that Animals Vegetables and Minerals are one and the same in their essence and that they differ in themselves and are distinct accidentally only in respect of a greater or less perfection and in their soun ain and root there is no difference But that the Salt of Nature is every where and in all things to be found according to the Nature of every thing in due weight number and measure but it is not alike easie to educe it out of every subject neither is it apt or sit enough for all things out of every matter especially for that which they call the Philosopher's Art or hath it a virtue desired and sufficient for so great a work Therefore the best in all nature ought to be chosen unless the industrious searcher propound to himself to lose his labour and cost and would gain his desired end Hic labor hoc opus est But now to search out and find the Universal Centre of all Creatures seems to be a matter of no small difficulty and verily it is sought of many but found of very sew When yet the thing is not so difficult if with a perspicacious and due attention we consider the holy Scripture and reading it throughly mind the genuine sense of the words Man therefore without any dark cloud or veil or any aenigmatical hieroglyphical manner of speaking usual to all other Philosophers I now say is that Universal Centre of the Earth Air and Water Out of a spiritual incorporated desire of the love of whole Nature God on the sixth day out of a spiritual incorporated desire of loves would have him to be as it were a concentrated Body and Compendium of the whole Universe In this sixth light all the harmonies of all the properties by a divine moving within themselves gave their consent and harmonious accord to produce one Centre and one Light out of their sweet concord and friendly wedlock and with an unanimous counsel as I may so say decreed constituted and confirmed this Centre their King sustainer and conserver and gave him full power and an eternal empire But the Divine Power above the ordained laws of Nature plainly by a new manner or as it were by a new ordination or creation made this Center corporeal in his own Image according to his own Form and Similitude as it were God of God to his own glory That Man for whose sake all things were created that in five days
saw the light might be the God and Lord of all elementary and created things only God alone should be his Lord. Thus God placed Man in the middle between that which is superiour and that which is inferiour and did inspire into him by the word Ruach Elohim noted in the Hebrew Book through the two nostrils the breath of a twofold life one whereof was the breath of the eternal word of God or of the eternal life the other was the elementary and astral airy breath or spirit and word of time Both these infused powers of life in Man divided themselves so that each formed and possessed its own Center to it self which was the continual will and desire of each of them after its first original or primordial nature Both of them desired its Mother from whence they proceeded and each desired for her self to be nourish'd by her essence So the Will as the Father did generate in the Lifes Center for himself the Appetite or Desire as his Son and Offspring from both which the Will and Desire did proceed the Spirit as the power of living by the attracting and breathing nature from God and the Airy world But the Body of the Element did also produce out of their properties the Center the Will the Desire and Power of attracting out of its Mother the Earth and Water and out of it desired to quench its thirst and suck her Breasts he eat therefore and fill d himself with her containing in himself a tripl triunity in one body of Man and living in this manner that Man might be an Image of God after his likeness But yet the Center of the Body Spirit and Soul were not compelled by any necessity to sill and satiate themselves from the Water Air and Earth but the highest liberty of Will was left unto them after the likeness of the Free-will of God It was free to the good lucid pleasant sweet will which took its beginning from the pleasant meekness to contract it self and diffuse it self in and through all circumferences over which as their Center and Ruler she held her Empire Yea it was lawfull and free to him to divide himself more or less as it pleased him He could also without any thing opposing him by a too ardent strong and vehement motion of his Seed and out-going powers from himself produce in himself another sharp pestilent appetite and malignant desire after a sharp austere and venemous food He could also shut his mouth and appetite by not attracting that aliment which was necessary for him But it would be too long and large here to tell what was the nature and condition of that food and how at that time Adam and Eve by a power and hurtfull pleasure did eat together and dyed that death which in heavenly natures happeneth in a heavenly and spiritual manner It is also not our business here to relate how they fell in their Will and kept as it were imprisoned the Appetite and Power of the good which they receiv'd from the highest good and made it unfruitful and how they closed obdurated the mouth of their soul and choaked the very good exerting it self in them because the lamentable condition of them both O! alas maketh it sufficiently known But not only the Soul in Adam and Eve did undergo the deplored condition of death but seeing all were knit together in one Body the burning fire of the Soul kindled also the Spirit and Body the Spirit and Body did infect the Air Water and Earth and compell'd them to consent and precipitated them into that miserable condition with themselves because the Body and Spirit were the Center and Universal Heart and held the potency of their Imagination in their Mother the Air Water and Earth it was of necessity it should so come to pass Like as in this time when the Heart in the Body is sick the whole Body is sick and suffers pain When self-desires go forth from the Heart according to the word of God all things pertaining to that Man contract thence some impurity Yea sometimes for the Offences of the Heart all the other Members shall be afflicted although they have done nothing but a forced duty and by a necessary obedience After the same manner the Earth ought and yet must bear for Adam's sake the horrour of the curse But let us not expatiate too much in the Field of Theology We must return to Natural Philosophy I have affirmed that Man is the Center and Compendium of all created things to him before the Fall all things in this World were obedient through the force and power of his Imagination which he exercised from the Center into all his Circumferences But as the Devil through the malignant force of his Imagination lost the right and power of the good Imagination in his first Kingdom this our World so Adam who was constituted by God in the place of the lapsed Angel which then assumed a grosser substance through the fall of Lucifer who rendred that place of a grosser substance by the like false and malign Imagination destroyed and lost the first or ancient power of the good and the right of the Divine Nature His imagination in this time and station is odious to nature and abominable neither hath it any ingress so nothing is left remaining to Man but a miserable Body which with its Spirit is heavily or with grief sustained by nature He has but a weak and slender power even to this day given to him through his judgment reason and labour of the body to bring some things in nature from worse into better and from better into worse and by this means to make some particular and gross mutations The Natural man therefore doth draw the Vital Spirit from the Air Water and Earth in a twosold manner from beneath and from above From above by the attraction of the Air or his respiration he enjoyeth the spirit power and breath of the out-flowing and out-going word to wit the gale or out-flowing spirit of the Air and turneth it into his nourishment but from beneath he partakes of the Flesh and Blood of the World The Flesh of the World Animals Vegetables and Minerals afford the Blood the Water affordeth the quintessence and spirit or most subtle breath and highest outgoing power of this Flesh and Blood Man enjoyeth That Spirit with its spiritual Salt doth not only refresh and nourish the Spirits of Men but from it also the Alchahistical dissolving power of the ferment in the Stomach derives its original the other parts of the Body do also take their ferment from thence so the Flesh and Blood of all the Macrocosm receiving a kind dissolution in the Humane Body by separating and preparing do afford and yield his Salt to the preparation of the Flesh and Blood of the Microcosm so that the thirsty and hungry particles of the Microcosm do eagerly desire and imbibe it but the excrementitious outsides do find their egress through the emunctories
of the Head the pores parts and clandestine exits beneath and above Here if thou canst from the inferiour parts of the World draw out the inward Centre or Salt of Nature or from the superior the Heart or Center most of all hidden thou shalt be to me Magnus Apollo But greater yet will I admire thee if thou canst find out the Astral and Central Salt of Nature in abundance and great plenty united in one thing as in Man If thou knowest this I will confess that thou possessest natural wisedom and I promise thee that with this light thou canst unlock the most hidden and recluse mysteries of Nature and make samiliar to thee hidden treasures He that hath the knowledge of the Microcosm cannot long be ignorant of the knowledge of the Macrocosm This is that which the Aegyptian industrious searchers of Nature so often said and loudly proclaimed that every one should know himself This speech their dull Disciples took in a moral sense and out of ignorance assixt it in their Temples But I admonish thee whosoever thou art that desirest to dive into the inmost parts of nature if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee thou wilt never find it without thee If thou knowest not the excellency of thine own house for what doest thou seek and search after the excellency of other things The universal Orb of the Earth contains not so great mysteries and excellencies as a little Man formed by God to his Image And he that desires the primacy amongst the studiers of Nature will no where find a greater and better reserve to obtain his desire than in himself Therefore I will here follow the example of the Aegyptians and from my whole heart and certain true experience proved by me speak to my Neighbour in the Aegyptians words and with a loud voice now proclaim O Man know thy self in thee is hid the treasure of treasures Thine it is by the external breath in the Air to enjoy that breath of the Firmament which the wonderfull Astrum attracting from the supercoelestial Waters hath breathed into the middle region of the Air where it by the motion of the Air suffers it self in the Air to be coagulated and incorporated with the Air. Thou O Man art he who thro' the Air enjoyest the breath and power of the Water and Earth and in thy self enjoyest both the Elements and maked them one and thy self not knowing what a treasure thou hast hidden in thee from the coagulation and consent of these powers producest an essence called by us the expert the great and miraculous mystery of the World that is the true fiery Water Eschva-mayim Hascha-mayim yea it surmounts in its power the Fire Air Earth and Water for it dissolves and radically incrudates the mature constant and very fixt fire abiding mass and matter of Gold and reduceth it into a fat and black Earth like to thick Spittle wherein we find a Water and the true Salt destitute of all ardor vehemency and corrosive nature of the Fire There is nothing in the whole world to be found which can doe this nothing is shut to it and though it is a precious thing more precious than every thing yet the poor as well as the rich has it in the same and equal plenty The Wise men have sought this thing the Wise men have found it Hermes of this thing composed his twenty and eight Books and these Books I have seen with these Eyes and the Wise men of the new World have them and keep them in their own hands without any mixture of falshood And you my Friends seek this in divers things but perhaps none of you have known its secret recesses where it is hid or have found its ways and can tell what shape it shall be of if at any time he chance to see it But it is I tell you the simple and plain truth the Spiritual Water and Watery Spirit the Water of Life which Adam and Eve brought out of Paradice with them for their consolation and which by their Offspring they left to posterity O noble Water lucid and sweet O despised Water obscure and bitter O Water comforting us till death This is that Corner-stone which the wise builders the great Phylosophers and expert Masters of Alchymie and of Israel from unskilfull ignorance neglecting rejected even to this day Sometimes at length open your Eyes O mortal Men with your whole heart love God and your Neighbour pray in Humility and Meekness that the Lord would be gracious to you and turn the darkness of your Mind into Light In these words I have openly shewed the way and to these I will add over and above this further Explication The World in which the matter of the Sophy is nighest and best to be found is Man the highest Artifice is in him his metalline Mine is to be opened the tenth time the Brass which there is dug is the best and worst in Nature the Water most precious and most vile the Water Earth together and always in themselves joyned with another thing the Son Birth and Seed of the most pure Bodies is born in Man for his profit and necessity its name is Tessa If by your industry you have found your matter seperate the pure from the impure without fire or admixtion of any other thing prepare a Virgin-earth which ought to be without Odour without Tast without Colour seperate from that the Central Salt the Microcosmick Vitriol the Philosophick Venus the Mercury of the Microcosm the Philosophick Luna purifie and produce out of it a Son more noble than his Parents Then thou wilt see the causes and reasons that imprest the Egyptians that they gave the Signature of Luna and Venus to Argent Vive why they put beneath the sign of Copper the character of Luna above The uppermost or Astral Salt is most volatile sweet and shines and glisters like pure Silver and it s nothing else than the Silver of the Sophy and the Mercurial Saline Spirit But the central Salt is a Vitriol of infinite wonderfull and ineffable Virtue which coagulates the Argent Vive and changes it into pure Silver But Venus is inclosed in Saturn's Vestment from which she must be freed that she may appear Naked in her Beauty to the Eyes of the Artist From these two kinds of Salt all the Metals are generated and there is the same reason of the Microcosm as of the Macrocosm So I have shewn you the Metalliue Mine in your own Body and have demonstrated to you how out of it with the addition of no other thing you may prepare Gold Argent Vive Copper Lead c. I shew you the way which I my self have gone for I have seen with a moderate and due fire produced out of this matter the medicine of the 〈◊〉 Minerals and Animals concerning which so many Books have been disperst about Whether the ancient or modern Phylosophers have gone in this way it 's not my business now