Page 31 - Book of Crates

As true as I had received a volley of blows, I answered her, “I
promise you to keep secret on this matter.”

Immediately she detached from her waist a belt of gold, in which
were inlaid two stones, one white and the other red; on these two stones
were set two pieces of sulphur, which were not pieces of (true) sulphur.

“Take,” she told me, “This belt, sprinkle it with liquor, until it
lives and it changes its nature: then it will leave this perfume that you
have just experienced. It is claimed that the substance from which one
extracts these jewels that I saw is useful, and which this substance
experiences the action of moisture and the dryness. This is said by one
who is intelligent and who understands.”

At this moment, I awoke and I found myself at the place which I
occupied before in this heaven, I saw appear the angel who had
promised not to leave me before having given me in a complete and
clear way the information on the subject which tormented me

“Return,” he said to me, “To the things with which you occupied
yourself and finish the writing of the book that you conceived, in order
to explain the sense of the texts of the Ancients and their strange
speeches.”

“Speak,” I exclaimed.

“The white composition,” he answered, “Is the body of the
magnesia; it is composed of fixed things, joined together in one
composition, in order to form a homogeneous whole, which we indicate
by an unique name: it is what the Ancients also called the
molybdochalque.

“When he underwent the operation, we gave him the ten names,
drawn from the colours that appear during the operation on the body of
the magnesia; it is during this operation that mercury acts on the four
bodies. The bodies which react are: mercury, the brilliant earth, the
earth pulled from the four bodies and the selenite [moonstone or

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