Page 42 - Book of Crates

While hearing that he held this opinion, I believed that he wanted to
fight the female dragon, the other one of the dragons. I stopped
questioning him then, while seeing his assurance. He took the dragon
then and tore it in pieces, using his spear.

All these pieces had varied colours; he then gathered together the
pieces of a same colour. As I had fixed my attention for a long time on
what he made, I perceived that these colours looked like the colours of
our work. There were some colours similar to those of the adamas and
the electrum; others looked like the ferruginous marcassite, deprived of
its spirit; others to the ashen tutty (cadmie); others to the yellow mud
and others to the red cinnabar. When he had finished uniting the similar
colours, he took the egg of the crocodile and broke it; then he separated
the white from the red and the moisture, and he put the white then with
the white, the red with the red.

While the young man was occupied in this operation, the dragon
sprang up filled with life. It blew against us and if I had not taken the
precaution to throw the living water onto it, which made its head fall
from its body, it would certainly have killed us.

When the young man saw what had happened to the dragon, he
entered into a violent anger and swore that he would reduce this dragon
into dust. Then he began to recite powerful magic formulas, until the
dragon was reduced to dust. He placed the remnants of it in a vessel,
without pressing them too much. It left there the water, in which there
was a poison. Every time that he withdrew a part of this water, he
diverted his face so that nothing penetrated into his nostrils.

When the young man had finished his operation, he said to me:
“Oh Cratès, keep what you have just seen well and record it in your
book, for those that will come after you. What you saw me making,
when I killed this dragon, is the secret of Hermes Trismegistus; he hid
it in his book, because he felt reluctant to make it known to the laymen.
Know that it is I that showed you the heavens, when you went up there.
If you had not kept the secret of what you saw me making, I would
have killed you before delivering this secret to you. And if you describe
in your book what you saw and that you want to reveal the secret of it,

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