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.
by the words, *Everything is already coagulated." The substance contains all that is needed ; there is nothing to be added or taken away, seeing that it is dissolved and again conjoined by its own inherent properties. When the Sage continues, *I bid you take water of life, which descends from the Moon, and pour it upon our earth till it turns white," he means that if water and earth are separated from each other, then the dry body is our earth, and the extracted water is the water of the Moon, or water of life. "This process of adfusion, desiccation, attrition, coagulation, etc., is repeated till the body turns white ; and then takes place onr conglutination, which is indissoluble. *'Then," as the Sage says, "we have our Magnesia, and the Nature of natures rejoices." Its spirit and body become one thing: they were one thing, and after separation have once more become one thing ; therefore, one nature rejoices in the restoration of the other.
Exposztzon of the Saying of Ethelzus.
He says: * Heat our Stone until it shines like dazzling marble; then it becomes great, and a mystic Stone; for sulphur added to sulphur preserves it on account of its fitness" That is tosay: When the moist and the dry have been separated, the dry which lies at the bottom, and is called our Stone, is as black asaraven. It must be subjected to the coction of our water (separated from it) until it loses its blackness, and becomes as white as dazzling marble. "Then it is the mystic Stone which by coction has been transmuted into fixed mercury with the blessing of God. The Stone is mystic, or secret, because it is found in a secret place, in an universally despised substance where no one looks for the greatest treasure of the world. Hence it may well be called The HIDDEN STONE. By the joining of two sulphurs and their mutual preservation, he means that though, after the separation of spirit and body, there seem to be two substances, yet, in reality, there is only one substance; so the body which is below is *sulphur," and the spirit which is above is also *sulphur" Now, when the spirit returns to the body, one sulphur is added to another; and they are bound together by a mutual fitness, since the body cannot be without the spirit, nor the spirit without the body. Hence there are these
THE GLORY OF THE WORLD. 22/7
two sulphurs in the body, the red and the white, and the white sulphur is in the black body, while the red is hid beneath it. If the spirit is gradually added to the body, it is entirely coagulated into the body, sulphur is added to sulphur, and perfection is attained through the fitness which exists between them. 'The body receives nothing but its own spirit; for it has retained its soul, and what has been extracted from a body can be joined to nothing but that same body. The spirit delights in nothing so much as in its own soul, and its own body. Hence the Sage says: * When the spirit has been restored to the body, the sulphur to the sulphur, and the water to the earth, and all has become white, then the body retains the spirit, and there can be no further separation." "Thus you have the well purged earth of the Sages, in which we sow our grain, unto infinity, that it may bring forth much fruit.
Explanation of the Saying of Pythagoras.