The Hermetic Museum, Vol. I — trans. A. E. Waite (1893)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (A. E. Waite). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
lv. BOoNIDUS: In the fountain of Nature our Substance is found, and nowhere else upon earth ; and our Stone is fire, and has been generated in fire, without, however, being consumed by fire.
lvi. RosINUS: Two things are hidden in two things, and indicate our Stone: in earth is fire, and air in water, yet there are only two outward things, viz, earth and water. For Mercury is our Stone, consisting as it does both of moist and dry elements. Mercury is dry and moist in its very nature, and all things have their growth from the dry and moist elements.
lvii. GEBER: We cannot find anything permanent, or fixed, in fire, but only a viscous natural moisture which is the root of all metals. For our venerable Stone nothing is required but mercurial substances, if they have been well purified by our Art, and are able to resist the fierce heatoffire. This Substance penetrates to the very roots of metals, overcomes their imperfect nature, and transmutes them, according to the virtue of the Elixir, or Medicine.
lvii. AnROS: Our Medicine consists of two things, and one essence. There is one Mercury, of a fixed and a volatile substance, composed of body and spirit, cold and moist, warm and dry.
lix. ARNOLDUS: Let your only care be to regulate the coction of the Mercurial substance. In proportion as it is itself dignified shall it dignify bodies.
lx. ALPHIDIUs: Transmute the nature, and you will find what you want. For in our Magistery we obtain first from the gross the subtle, or the spirit; then from the moist the dry, Ze., earth from water. Thus we transmute the corporeal into the spiritual, and the spiritual into the corporeal, the lowest into the highest, and the highest into the lowest.
lxi... BERNARDUS: The middle substance is nothing but coagulated mercury ; and the first Matter is nothing but twofold mercury. For our Medicine is composed of two things, the fixed and the volatile, the corporeal and the spiritual, the cold and the warm, the moist and the dry. Mercury must be subjected to coction in a vessel with three divisions, that the dryness of the active fire may be changed into vaporous moisture of the oil that surrounds the substance. Ordinary fire does not digest our substance, but its heat converted into dryness is the true fire. :
Ixii STEPHANUS: Metals are earthly bodies, and are generated in water. The water extracts a vapour from the Stone, and out of the moisture of [the] earth, by the operation of the Sun, God lets gold grow and àccumulate. Thus earth and water are united into a metallic body.
Ixiii;. GuIDO BONATUS writes briefly concerning the quintessence, as being purer than all elements. "The quintessence contains the four elements, that is, the first Matter, out of which God has created, and still creates, all things. It is Hyle, containing in a confused mixture the properties of every creature.
lxiv. ALRIDOS: The virtue and efficacy of everything is to be found in its quintessence, whether its nature be warm, cold, moist, or dry. This quintessence gives out the sweetest fragrance that can beimagined. Therefore the highest perfection is needed.
Ixv. LONGINUS describes the process in the following terms: Let your vessel be tightly closed and exposed to an even warmth. This water is prepared in dry ashes, and is subjected to coction till the two become one. When one is joined to the other; the body is brought back to its spirit. Then the fire must be strengthened till the fixed body retains that which is not fixed by its own. heat. With this you can tinge ten thousand times ten thousand of other substances.
Ixvi. HERMES, in his Mysteries, says: Know that our Stone is lightly esteemed by the thankless multitude ; but it is very precious to the Sages. If princes knew how much gold can be made out of a particle of Sun, and of our Stone, they
, would never suffer it to be taken out of their dominions.
THE GLORY OF THE WORLD. za
*'lThe Sages rejoice when the bodies are dis- lc *solved; for our Stone is prepared with two" * waters. It drives away all sickness from the " *diseased body, whether it be human or" ** metallic."
By means of our Art, we do in one month what Nature cannot accomplish in a thousand years: for we purify the parts, and then join them together in an inseparable and indissoluble union.
Ixvii, NERO: Know that our Mercury is dry and moist, and conjoined with the Sun and Moon. Sun and Moon in nature are cold and moist mercury and hot and dry sulphur, and both have their natural propagation by being joined in one thing.
Herve follows a T: vue Explanation of some of the Foregoing Philosophical Dicta, the. smeaning, word for word and point for point, being clearly set forth.