Page 18 - Treatise on Salt

You may then easily understand, that you can do nothing without
dissolution: for when this saturnine stone shall have imbibed the
mercurial water, and shall have congealed it within its own bonds, it is
necessary that by a gentle heat it should putrefy in itself, and be resolved
into its first humour; to the end that its invisible, incomprehensible, and
tinging spirit, which is the pure fire of the gold, enclosed and imprisoned
in the depth of a congealed salt, may be brought forth, and likewise that
its gross body may be also subtilised by regeneration, and may be
conjoined and inseparably united with its spirit.

Discourse translated from verse.

Resolve therefore your stone after a convenient manner,
And not after a sophistick way;
But rather pursuant to the thought of the wise,
Without adding thereto any corrosive;
For no other water is to be found that can dissolve our stone,
Except a little fountain very pure, and clear,
Which happens to run of its own accord,
And is the humour proper to dissolve it,
But it is hidden almost to all the world.
It heats so vehemently of itself,
That it causes our stone even to sweat tears:
It requires only a slow exterior heat;
And this is what you must chiefly remember.
But I must moreover discover another thing to you,
That if you don’t see a black smoke above,
And a whiteness beneath,
Your work has not been well performed,
And you have been mistaken in the dissolution of the stone.
Which you will immediately discover by that sign.
But if you proceed as you ought,
You will perceive a dark cloud,
Which without delay will sink to the bottom,
When the spirit shall assume a white colour:

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