Page 39 - Book of Crates

“By saying that they agreed in favour of the amalgam.”

“When gilders gild weapons and they amalgamate gold with
mercury, why does the gold become white and appears so to the eyes,
then, when the heating is finished and the operation completed, does it
become red?”

“It is the same (in our operation) for the mercury, which
overcomes initially the pieces of gold and whitens them, while making
the red colour disappear; but the mercury, overcome in its turn, lets the
red colour reappear at the end, so that we do not find any more the
white and it is not seen anymore.”

How do the four natures subjugate each other and how do they mix
themselves one with the other, to give as a result the created beings?

“Understand this well: the dense matters of the four natures mix
themselves merely some with the other, but in fact only the subtle
matters join together, at the time of the mixture, and that combine one
with the other. The subtle matters act on the subtle matters, not the
dense on the dense. So the earth and water are dense elements, while
air and fire are subtle elements. The two subtle elements weaken the
two dense elements and transform them into subtle matters, and God
makes some leave all created beings, by means of cooking and the
absorption of air. So we have here two dense elements and two subtle
elements: the two subtle elements are those that penetrate the two dense
elements and make them subtle. In the same way there are in the year
four seasons; each of them has its special temperament: the first is the
winter with the cold; the second, the summer; the third, the height of
the summer; the fourth, the autumn. The winter and the cold constrict
the ground and what it contains of seeds, so that they push up and make
sprout the first plants. In the second season, the summer, the plants and
the seeds acquire their complete development and their maturity. If the
height of the summer, with its burning sun, reached these plants (from
the beginning), it would burn and damage them; but the spring
preserves them, by its middle temperature: so that you see the plants
acquiring strength and developing themselves. When the intense heat of
the height of the summer reaches the plants, it makes some produce

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