Page 26 - Book of Crates

“The people who have a subtle mind and a discerning intelligence
will understand the sense of words that I have just said. As for the
ignorant, they will treat me as an impostor, because their understanding
does not allow them to reach to the knowledge of that which we have
just exposed. They will deny the truth therefore, they will pretend that
the worm does not become the snake and that the snake does not
become the dragon. However, you know that the animal on which the
philosophers operate, is a certain thing, the worm becomes snake, and
the snake, the dragon. In the beginning of the operation the body is
indeed, brilliant as silver, tough as gold, and sometimes red like
minium, sometimes black like darkness.

“The one that treats it all as fable and who claims that what you
wrote in this book was done to give a different account of the
obscurities and the enigmas of the works of the Ancients, while
imitating them. It is really quite strange that this man will not find
people who operate using lead, litharge, white lead and minium,
because it would seem, whereas everything that we said is the truth,
since with only one matter those people made various products, to
which they gave different names, although actually all it was the same
matter. It is somewhat in the same way as we explained.

“Every time that an addition was made, one obtained a new colour,
to which we gave a name, until we exhausted the set of names of these
various mixtures. In the beginning, the body was called molybdo-
chalque and the body of the magnesia; then it took the name of lead, or
sometimes of black lead, or of white lead. However, the unique thing is
the lead, of which the Ancients said that it had superiority over the ten.
It was born of the combinations of this unique principle which we
called lead.”

“According to your words, oh virtuous soul”, I resumed, “is it
advisable to extract from this lead, colours, or colourable matters?”

“What is it necessary to extract?”, he answered, “They are the
colourable matters, and the colours to which the Ancients gave names
to materials. So what we name cinnabar colour is not the true cinnabar.
It is the same for the ten names of which I spoke to you and that

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