Page 25 - Compound of Compounds

Mercury might escape.

You will place the phial over lukewarm ashes; the water will immediately begin to
act on the Mercury, dissolving and incorporating it. Leave the phial over the lukewarm
ashes; there must not be an excess of water and the sublimated Mercury must dissolve
entirely. The water acts by imbibition on the Mercury until it has been dissolved.

If the water was unable to dissolve all of the mercury, you will take what remains
at the bottom of the phial and desiccate it by slow fire, you will pulverize and dissolve
it in a new quantity of second water. Repeat this operation until all of the sublimated
mercury has been dissolved in the water. You will reunite all of these solutions into one
solution, in a glass vase, very clean; its orifice you will seal perfectly with wax. Put
carefully aside. For this here is our third water, philosophical, thick, perfect to the third
degree. It is the mother of the Living Water that reduces all the bodies into their first
matter.

Fourth water that reduces calcined bodies into their first matter

Take some third mercurial water, perfect to the third degree, limpid; let it putrefy
in horse dung in a phial with a long neck, clean, well closed, during fourteen days.

Let it ferment and its impurities will fall to the bottom and the water will pass from
a yellow to a rusty colour. At that moment you will withdraw the phial and put it over
ashes by a very gentle fire; fit onto it the head of the alembic with its receptacle. Start
the distillation slowly. What drips drop by drop is our very limpid, pure, weighty living
water, Virgin’s Milk, very sharp Vinegar. Maintain the fire softly until all the living
water has distilled slowly; then cease the fire, let the furnace stand and cool down and
keep with care your distilled water. Here is our Living Water, Vinegar of the
philosophers, Virgin’s Milk that resolves the bodies into their first matter. It has been
called an infinite variety of names.

Here are the properties of this water; one drop deposited on a hot copper plate
penetrates it immediately and leaves a white stain. Thrown onto coals, it emits fumes;
exposure to air congeals it and it resembles ice. When we distil this water, the drops’
trajectories swerve: these ones pass here, those ones pass there. It does not act upon
metals like sharp, corrosive water, that would dissolve them; it nonetheless reduces to
Mercury all the bodies that it immerses, as we shall see.

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