Page 17 - Treatise on Salt

menstruums must be separated, which may have been made use of, as
assistants in this art, in order that nothing that is strange, and of another
nature may there remain; and this precaution must likewise be had, lest
the too great outward heat, or other dangerous accident should perhaps
exhale, or destroy the interior generative and multiplicative virtue of our
stone, as the philosophers admonish us in the Turba saying: take care
chiefly in the putrefaction of the stone, and be mindful that the active
virtue be not burnt or suffocated, because no seed can grow, nor
multiply, when it has been deprived of its generative force by any
exterior fire. Having got the sperm or seed, you may then by a gentle
digestion happily accomplish your work: for we first gather the sperm of
our magnesia; being drawn out, we putrify it; being putrefied, we
dissolve it; being dissolved, we divide it into parts; being divided, we
purify it; being purified, we unite it; and so we consummate our work.

This is what is taught us in these words by the author of the most
ancient duel, or of the dialogue between the stone and the gold, and the
vulgar mercury:
“By the omnipotent God, and upon the salvation of my soul, I point out
and discover to you, you who are lovers of this most excellent art, out of
a sincere motion of fidelity, and compassion to your long inquiry, that
our whole work is made but of one thing, and is perfected by itself,
having need only of dissolution, and congelation; which ought to be done
without the addition of any foreign thing. For as ice in a dry vessel, being
put upon the fire, is converted into water by the heat: in like manner, our
stone has no need of any other thing, than the assistance of the artist,
which is obtained by the help of his manual operation, and by the action
of the natural fire. For, admitting it were to be eternally hidden very deep
in the earth, yet it could never perfect itself in any thing; it must therefore
be helped; not however in such a manner, as that it should be requisite to
add to it any foreign thing, or that is contrary to its nature: but it must
rather be governed after the same manner, as God causes the production
to us of the fruits of the earth, in order to our nourishment; as for
instance, the several grains, which must be afterwards threshed and
carried to the mill, that bread may be made thereof. It is just the same in
our work; God has created this copper for us, which is the only thing we
take: we destroy its crude and crass body; we take out the good kernel
which it has within itself; we reject what is superfluous; and we prepare a
medicine of what was only a venom.”

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