Page 19 - Book of Crates

“You are right”, he told me, “and your words are precise.”

Then I added: “If you allow me here, I will reveal to you what I
intend to make of this marvelous science, for those that will come after
me.”

“Say”, he answered me, when I had unfolded my ideas to him, he
smiled and added, “Your intentions are excellent, but your soul will
never resolve to reveal the truth, because of the diversities of the
opinions and the miseries of pride.”

“Prescribe me”, I replied, “up to what point I must go.”

“Write this”, he told me, “Take the copper and what looks like
copper, the weight of two menn, that matter which is raw and
underwent no preparation. Also take the same weight of mercury and
that which looks like mercury, the two white, rough and unprepared
matters, equally. All those that will come after you will not know how
to recognise that these are spirits if you did not indicate them by their
names. The weak and unwise man who will read this will take the weak
spirits, that will not be able to endure the fire, that will have no
strength, and will be devoured by fire during the operation. As he will
not obtain anything, his anguish and his blindness will only increase,
expecting that he should have followed the precept of the Ancients:
make the corporeal incorporeal. Know that the copper has, as well as
Man, a soul, a spirit and a body. Do not speak in your book of the dry
sulphurs, nor of the arsenics and other similar things; because in all
these substances, there is nothing good. You know it from elsewhere,
that because fire devours them and burns them, one cannot derive any
profit from it.

“As for our sulphur, about which you will have to speak in your
book, it is a sulphur that does not burn and which fire cannot devour,
but which volatilises under the action of fire. In this way the Ancients
claimed that the substances which volatilised contained the tincting
spirit, at the same time as smoke. In the same way the composed water
is only perfect in the condition of being similar to the mixture. All this
is extracted literally from the book.

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