Page 14 - Treatise on Salt

All the philosophical truth consists in the radix we have mentioned;
and whoever knows well this principle, viz. that all that is above is
governed entirely as what is below: so on the contrary, he also knows the
use and operation of the philosophical key, which by its pontic bitterness
calcines and reincrudates all things, although by this reincrudation of
perfect bodies, there would be only found the same sperm, which may be
had ready prepared by nature, without any need of reducing the compact
body, but rather that very sperm, altogether, soft and not ripe, such as
nature gives it us, the which may be brought to its maturity.

Apply yourself therefore wholly to this primitive metallic subject, to
which nature has truly given the form of a metal: but it has left it yet
crude, not ripe, imperfect, and not finished, in the soft mountain, of
which, you may more easily dig a pit, and draw out of the same our pure
pontic water which the fountain encompasses, the which alone (to the
exclusion of all other water) is of its own nature disposed to convert
itself into a paste with its proper flower, and with its solar ferment; and
after to digest itself into ambrosia. And although our stone is found of the
same genus in all the seven metals, according to the saying of the
philosophers, who affirm that the poor (to wit, the five imperfect metals)
possess it as well as the rich (viz. the two perfect metals) yet the best of
all the stones is found in the new habitation of Saturn, which has never
been touched; that is to say, of him whose son presents himself, not
without great mystery, to the eyes of the world, day and night, and of
whom the world makes use when it sees it, and which the eyes can never
attract by any species, to that effect that one may see, or at least believe,
that this great secret is contained in this son of Saturn, as all the
philosophers assert and even swear it; and that it is moreover the cabinet
of their secrets, and that it comprehends within itself the spirit of the sun,
shut up in its own bowels, and proper intestines.

We can not for the present more clearly describe our vitriolated egg,
provided the reader be acquainted with any of the children of Saturn, viz.
‘The triumphing antimony; the bismuth, or tin of ice melting at the
candle; the cobaltum blackening more than lead or iron: the lead which
makes the trials: the plumbites (a matter so called) which the painters
make use of: the zinc which colours, and appears admirable, by its
showing itself in a different manner, almost under the form of mercury: a
metallic matter, which may be calcined, and vitriolised by air, etc.
although this serene vulcan which is inevitable; the cook of human race,

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