Page 12 - Treatise on Salt

silver, and pushed on to a redness, becomes gold. For there is only what
is homogeneous in him, and of the same nature, that ripens and
coagulates by coction; of which you have a certain final mark, when it
attains to a supreme degree of redness, and the whole mass resists the
strongest flame of fire, without emitting the least smoke or vapour, or
becoming any whit lighter in weight: after that, it must be again
dissolved by a new menstruum of the world; so that, that portion which is
strongly fixed flowing all about, be received into its belly, in which this
fixed sulphur is brought to a much easier fluidity and solubility: and the
volatile sulphur likewise, by the mean of the very great magnetic heat of
the fixed sulphur ripens speedily, etc. For one mercurial nature will not
quit the other; but when we see that this one, red or white, after the
manner we have above represented, or rather that the ripe antimony,
fixed and perfect, becomes apt to congeal in the cold, whereas it will
easily become liquid in the heat, like wax, and be very easy to resolve in
any liquor whatever, and will diffuse itself through all the parts of the
subject, giving it a colour throughout, as a little saffron tinges a great
deal of water. Therefore this fixed liquability cast upon melted metals,
resolving itself into the form of water in a very great heat, will penetrate
into the least particle of the same; and this fixed water will be able to
retain all that is volatile therein, and to preserve it from combustion. But
then a double heat of fire and of sulphur will act so powerfully, that the
imperfect mercury will be no way able to resist; and almost in the space
of half an hour, there will be heard a certain noise or crackling, which
will be an evident sign that the mercury has been overcome, and that he
has ejected outwardly, what he had inwardly, and that all is converted
into a most pure and perfect metal.

Whoever then has ever had any tincture, either philosophical, or
particular, has not been able to extract it but from this sole principle; as
says that great philosopher Basil Valentine, who was a native of the
upper Alsace, and our German compatriot (who lived in my country
about fifty years ago) in his book entitled The triumphal Chariot of
Antimony, where treating of the different tinctures which may be drawn
from this same principle he writes:

“That the stone of fire (made of antimony) does not tinge universally as
does the stone of the philosophers, which is prepared of the essence of
the sun; nay even less than all the other stones; for nature has not given it
so much virtue for that effect: but it tinges only in particular, viz. tin,
lead, and Luna into Sol, he neither makes mention of iron nor of brass,

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