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

like all things in Nature. Richard (cp. x.)tells us" to sow gold and silver, that aided by our labour they may bring forth fruit, through the mediation of Nature: for these two have [and are] what you seek and nothing else in all the world." And why should I not fix on them since they contain pure and perfect mercury, with red and white sulphur. (Richard,cp. xvii) So Avicenna teaches that, * in all silver is white, as in all gold there is red, sulphur. No other sulphur like that which exists in these bodies is found on allthe earth. Therefore we cunningly prepare these two bodies, that we may have sulphur and quicksilver of the same substance as that which generates gold and silver under the earth. For they are shining bodies, whose rays tinge other bodies with true whiteness and redness, according to the manner of their own preparation." * For our Magistery," says, Arnold (Rosar, pt. Ll, cp. v.) "aids perfect bodies, and works upon the imperfect without the admixture ofanything else. Gold, then, being the most precious of all the metals, is the red tincture, tinging and transforming every body. Silver is the white tincture, tinging other bodies with its perfect whiteness." Let me tell the gentle reader that the metals, that is to say, gold and silver in their metallic form, are not the Matter of our Stone—being in the middle between them and the base metals, as our Matter is in the middle between the former and our Great Stone. So Bernard says (pt.ii): * Let them be silent who affirm that there is any tincture but our own, or any other sulphur than that which lies hid in magnesia ; also those who would extract the quicksilver from any but the red slave, and who speak of some other water but our own which is incorruptible and combines with nothing except that which belongs to its own nature, and moistens [tinges] nothing except that which is one with its own nature. There is no acid but our own, no other regimen, no other colours. In the same way, there is no other true solution, sublimation, consolidation, putrefaction. | therefore advise you to have done with alums, vitriols, salts, black bodies, borax, aqua fortis, herbs, animals, beasts, and all that proceeds from them, hairs, blood, urine, human seed, flesh, eggs, and all minerals, and to keep to the metals. But though the quicksilver required for our Stone is found in metals only, and in these is the beginning of the work, they 2are not therefore our Stone, so long. as they retain their metallic form. For one and the same substance cannot have two forms. How can they be the Stone which holds an intermediate form between metals and mercury, unless their present form is first destroyed and removed ?" Therefore, also, Raymond Lully says in his * Testament" (cp. vi): * On this account a good artist takes metals for his media in the work of the magistery, and especially the Sun and Moon, because in them the substance of the Mercury and Sulphur is ripened, pure, and well-digested by Nature's own artifice, ^ The artist would vainly endeavour to produce this exact proportion out of the natural elements, if he did not find it ready to his hand in these bodies" ^ And in the * Codicil" he says: * Without these two, viz, gold and silver, our art would have no existence, since the sulphur they contain has been purified by nature with a thoroughness such as art would vainly strive to imitate. From these two bodies, with their prepared sulphur [or prepared arsenic] our Medicine may be elicited, but without them we can never obtain it." In the preface to his * Key" he says: * [ advise you, my friends, to operate on nothing but the Sun and Moon ; but these you should resolve into their elementary subtances, viz, our quicksilver and our sulphur." In like manner Arnoldus assures us that *from these bodies there is extracted an exceedingly white and red sulphur; for in these there is a most pure substance of sulphur, cleansed to the highest degree by Nature's own artifice." ^ Nicarus, in * The Crowd," says: *I bid. you take gold, which you desire to multiply and renew, and to divide its water into two parts ; for that metal falling into that water will be called the fermenting matter of gold." How can this Sage call his * water" gold? To - assist the student in solving this enigma I must tell him that the gold of the Sages is not common gold, as also Senior tells us. In *The Crowd" it is said : * As mercury is the element of all metals, so gold is their ultimate goal; hence in all metals, pure and impure, there are gold,silver, and mercury. But there is one true gold which is the essence of all? ^ Thus you see that there is a gold of the Sages, which, though derived from common gold, is yet very different from it. The following words occur in the * Rising Dawn" (cp. xvi) * The philosopher's gold resembles common