Page 15 - Book of Crates

[These circles are coloured green like the verdigris of copper, with
the figures in yellow or red.]

[In the margin of the manuscript are the following lines: I found a
second copy, in which were circles surrounded by an inscription. One
will find this inscription indicated in the margin. There were seven
circles corresponding to the first firmament, to the second, the third
and so forth up to the seventh. Below each circle were the letters
without diacritical points that I reproduced.]

Definition of the stone that is not a stone, nor of the nature of the
stone. It is a stone that is generated every year. Its mine is on the
summits of the mountains.

It is an ore contained in the sand and in the rocks of all mountains;
it is also in the colouring matters, in the seas, in the trees, in the plants
and waters, and everything similar. As soon as you have recognised it,
take it and make some of the lime. Extract the soul, the body and the
spirit of it; then separate each of these things and place them each in the
vessel that is known to be assigned to them.

Mix the colours, as painters do, for the black, the white, the yellow
and the red, and as the physicians do in their mixtures, where the
humid and the dry are brought together, the hot and the cold, the soft
and the hard, in order to obtain a mixture well balanced and favourable
to the bodies. This is done with the help of determined weights,
according to which the weighed things combine; then one is confused
only as to the various qualities. I have just given you an example of it. I
taught you the true principles and the mysteries, while clearing them of
the enigmas in which the Ancients had enveloped them. Do not depart
from the description which is in the volume which has the title:
Modzhib ed-dholma ou ed-dhou monawwir (The one that chases away
darkness and produces a resplendent clarity).

[Below are figures (of alchemical apparatus) that were placed along
the manuscript lengthwise.]

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