Page 46 - Charnock alchemical letter

shall take place. Wherefore the philosophers have given to it many
goodly names, as their red stone, their medicine, their quintessence, their
magnesia, their Elixir great of price, to be made the one after the other.

The Oxford Man

I pray you why do the philosophers give their stone, so many wondrous
names?

Master Charnock

They do name every thing, by all things, that it hath a similitude of, in
every degree of his workings.

As in the first degree of his working they name earth and water, air and
fire, sol and luna, sulphur and mercury, body soul and spirit, male and
female, agent and patient, man and wife. And then to rule that wandering
woman who seeketh strange embracings and to cause her to tarry with
her husband, there will be somewhat for to do. And of the fugitive
servant, who will not bide his time of covenant without he be kept in a
prison made of strong glass, with whom that dragon must be, who for
lack of other food, shall be forced to eat his own wings, but the toads of
the earth, shall have there his natural fill. And then shall appear the
raven’s head, for and the crow’s bill: and then consequently with great
triumph and joy shall arise in sooth the philosophers’ black stone.

In the second degree and regiment of his working there will first appear
the green lion, and afterward the spotted panther, and when the rainbow
shall over blow, then shall the eagle without wings cry upon the hills
saying, I am white of black. Then the fume will penetrate into the body,
and the spirit shall bound in the dry. Then the foul corrupt black will
cease, and the bright white shall be made. Then the red sanguine man
shall be married to the fair white woman. And so it made complete the
philosophers’ white stone, which they rested upon.

In the third degree and regiment of his working there shall be a long and
cruel fight, between mercury the planet, and the venomous cockatrice,
and all this time the sun shall be eclipsed, but at length our artificial fire
shall made a peace betwixt these warriors and cause them to coagulate
them selves together in one. Then shall the sun rise in his horizon as
bright as ever was any gold for he hath put his pavilion in the sun and he
is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. Then is born a stone that
no blasts of the air hurteth it: then it remains in one thing fixed by

41