Page 47 - Charnock alchemical letter

temperate natural decoction. And this is the philosophers’ red stone, et ce
nam multa sunt mirabilia, que tamen en noveris causam cesat omnis
admiratio.22

The Oxford Man

Now I promise you faithfully, this was a philosophic discourse, and by it
I perceive that every science hath his proper terms. But I pray you say
unto me doth all the whole science consist in those three degrees and
regiments, which if it did, there were enough for me to break my brain
about, so long as I shall live.

Master Charnock

Many other regiments and operations there be, which the Bible would
not contain the chapters that I could conveniently write of them, as of
calcination, dissolution, elemental separation and conjunction. Of
decoction, putrefaction, mundification, and fixation. Of cibation,
sublimation, denigration, and dealbation. Of imbibition, impregnation,
albification, and coagulation. Of nutrition, citrination, vivification, and
resuscitation. Of reiteration, rubification, exaltation, and fermentation. Of
circulation, augmentation, and multiplication. These regiments and
operations the philosophers have dispersed into many chapters and
books, because it was not possible for them to declare their minds of the
whole science in a few books, therefore that which you find not in one
book you shall have in an other.

Yet the secret of all secrets they have left out, for that it ought not to be
written, nor told to no man, but unto him which it apt for the science. All
the other secrets they have written in dark sentences as by the parables,
similitudes, and allegories, which as Master Norton maketh mention, that
his Master under a most sacred oath did teach him all the secrets by word
of mouth in the space of forty days, whereat I have many times
marveled, that he might learn them in so short a time. For my Master was
a whole year a teaching of me all the secrets pertaining to this most
secret science.

And Sir George Ripley writes how that he traveled through many a
king’s land for one word, or ever he could find any man who could tell
him what true fermentation was, which as God would at last he did attain
unto the true meaning of the philosophers.

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