Page 29 - Treatise on Salt

This we were willing to observe to those who imagine, and believe
themselves to be great philosophers, and yet never put their hands to the
work; with this intention that they may seriously consider, whether
anything be wanting to them; for before this step, it often happens, that
the presumptious artists are forced to own and acknowledge their
ignorance and temerity. Nay there are some even among the greatest
doctors, and persons of the greatest acquisition, who persuade
themselves that our red servant digested, is to be extracted from the
common gold, by mean of a mercurial water, which error the most
learned author of the ancient Chymical Duel, has formerly demonstrated,
in a discourse of his, where he makes the stone speak after this manner:
“Some persons have so far deviated from me, that although they have
found the way to extract my tinging spirit, which they have mingled with
other metals and minerals, yet I have granted to them the fruition only of
a small portion of my virtue, to meliorate therewith those metals which
are most proximate to me, and nearest allied; but if these philosophers
had had recourse to my proper wife and had joined me to her, I should
have afforded a thousand times more tincture.

As to what relates to our conjunction, there are two different ways of
conjoining, of which the one is moist, and the other dry. The sun has
three parts of his water, and his wife has nine, or the sun has two, and his
wife has seven. And as the seed of a man is at one single time all injected
into the matrix of a woman, which closes immediately till the time of
delivery, after the same manner in our work we conjoin two waters, the
sulphur of God, and the soul and body of its mercury: the sun and the
moon: the husband and the wife: two seeds: two quicksilvers, and of
those two we make our quicksilver, and of this mercury, the stone of the
philosophers.”

Discourse translated from verse.

After the earth is well prepared,
To drink its humidity.
Then take together the spirit, soul and life,
And give them to the earth.
For what is the earth without seed?
And a body without a soul?
You shall therefore take notice, and observe
That the mercury is brought back to its mother.

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