The Hermetic Museum, Vol. I — trans. A. E. Waite (1893)

Mercury with its own oil. Then we havea twofold mercurial substance; but you must know that gold must first be dissolved in a certain water, as explained in my second Key, after the purification described in the first Key, and must be reduced into a subtle calx, as is mentioned in the fourth Key. Next, this calx must be sublimated by the spirit of salt, again precipitated, and by reverberation reduced into a subtle powder. Then its own sulphur can more easily enter into its substance, and have great friendship with the same, for they have a wondrous love towards each other. "Thus you have two substances in one, and it is called Mercury of the Sages, but is yet a single substance, which is the first ferment.

JVow follows concerning Sulphur.

Seek your Mercury in a similar metal Then when you know how to extract the metal from its body by purification, the destruction of the first Mars, and reverberation, without the use of any corrosive (the method of doing which I have indicated in my third Key)—you must dissolve that Mercury in its own blood, out of which it was made before it became fixed (as indicated in the sixth Key) ; and you have then nourished and dissolved the true lion with the blood of the green lion. For the fixed blood of the Red Lion has been made out of the volatile blood of the Green Lion; hence, they are of one nature, and the unfixed blood again renders that which is volatile fixed, and the fixed bleod in its turn fixes that which is volatile, as it was before its solution. . Then foster it in gentle heat, until the whole of the mercury is dissolved, and you obtain the secozd ferment (by nourishing the fixed sulphur with that which is not fixed), as all Sages,unite with me in testifying. X Afterwards this becomes, by sublimátion with spirit of wine, of a blood-red colour, and is called 7oza&/e go/d.

JVow I «will also give my Opinion vespecting the
Sa/t of the Sages.

The effect of *salt" is to fix or volatilize, according as it is prepared and used. For the spirit of the salt of tartar, if extracted by itself without any addition, has power to render all metals volatile by dissolution and putrefaction, and to dissolve quick or liquid silver into the true mercury, as my practical directions shew.

Salt of tartar by itself is a powerful fixative, particularly if the heat of quicklime be incorporated with it. For these two substances are singularly efficacious in producing fixation.

In the same way, the vegetable salt of wine fixes and volatilizes according to the manner ofits preparation. ts useis one of the arcana of Nature, and a miracle of the philosopher's art.

When a man, drinks wine, there may be gained from his urine a clear salt, which is volatile, and renders other fixed substances volatile, causing them to rise with it in the alembic. But the same does not fix. Ifa man drank nothing but wine, yet for all that the salt obtained from his urine would have a different property from that gained out of the lees of wine. For it has undergone a chemical change in the human body, having become transmuted from a vegetable into an animal salt—just as horses that feed on oats, straw, etc, change those vegetable substances into flesh and fat, while the bee prepares honey out of the precious juices of flowers and herbs.

he great change which takes place in these and other substances is due to Puzrefactzon, which separates and transmutes the constituent elements.

'The common spirit of salt, which is extracted according to the direction given in my last declaration, if there be added to it a small quantity of the "spirit of the dragon," dissolves, volatilizes, and raises together with itself in the alembic, gold and silver; justas the * eagle," together with the spirit of the dragon (which is found in stony places), before the spirit is separated from its body, is much more powerful in producing fixation than volatility. |