Page 9 - Treatise on Salt

A Treatise, or Discourse upon Salt,

the Third Principle of Minerals

Chapter 1

Of the quality and condition of the salt of nature.

Salt is the third principle of all things, of which the ancient
philosophers have not spoken. It has however been explained to us, and
as it were pointed at with the finger by J. Isaac, a Hollander, Basil
Valentine, and Theoph. Paracelsus; not that among the principles any one
be first, or any one last, since they have one and the same origin, and an
equal beginning: but we follow the method of our father, who has given
the first place to mercury, the second to sulphur, and the third to salt. It is
it chiefly which is the third being, that gives a beginning to minerals, that
contains in itself the two other principles, viz. mercury and sulphur, and
which in its birth has for its mother only the impression of Saturn, which
binds it, and renders it compact, of which the body of all metals is
formed.

There are three sorts of salt. The first is a central salt, which the spirit
of the world begets without any discontinuation in the centre of the
elements by the influences of the stars, and is governed by the rays of the
sun, and of the moon in our philosophical sea. The second is a spermatic
salt, which is the domicile or seat of the invisible seed, and which in a
gentle natural heat, by the mean of putrefaction gives of itself the form,
and vegetable virtue, to the end that this invisible and most volatile seed
be not dissipated, and entirely destroyed by an excessive outward heat, or
by any other contrary or violent accident: For if that should happen, it
would no longer be able to produce anything. The third salt, is the last
matter of all things, which is to be found in them, and which remains in
them even after their destruction.

This threefold salt took its birth from the first instant of the creation,
when God said, ‘Fiat’, and its existence was made out of nothing,

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