Page 20 - Book of Crates

“It is advisable to add these tincting spirits, susceptible to vanish by
the action of the intense heat of fire when the bodies are whitened, to
the tincting spirits which come from the bodies, of which (the latter
spirits, that is) have been extracted by volatilisation. It is this product
that, with the permission of God, will revive the bodies, will improve
them and will return them to the perfect state that you seek to give
them.”

I remained amazed with admiration. He repeated his words to me
then and added, “Write your book according to the information that I
gave to you; know that I am with you and that I will not abandon you,
as long as you will not have completed your enterprise; it will be worth
the favour of God to you. Also know that the combination of the bodies
does not take place as much as the bodies present between them a
certain affinity of colour and taste. You dissolve them together, so that
they mix and become a homogeneous liquid, which is called then the
pure sulphur water. It does not contain any more any bad principle.
Here is a mystery solved.

“It is with this substance that one makes the dry sulphur, that the
philosophers called rust and ferment of gold, gold that is well tested
and gold coral (purple gold). But that can take place only when the
mixture of the bodies constituted a homogeneous substance; then it is
called the excellent thing and it receives several names. Write all this,
in order to obtain the molybdochalque, in which resides all secret
virtue. Nevertheless I am of the opinion that you need not write down
all these multiple combinations in a book intended for those that will
come after you; because all the work is contained in the
molybdochalque only.”

When he had made me really understand all these things, he
disappeared and I came back to myself. I was as a man who wakes up
with a heavy and uneasy head from his sleep. Two things had especially
made a sharp impression on me. The first, was that he had diverted me
from the project to write the book that I had conceived; the second, was
that he had not finished his speech, before disappearing from my eyes.

16