The Hermetic Museum, Vol. I — trans. A. E. Waite (1893)
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The translator’s English as printed (A. E. Waite). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
mercury. For this reason, the ancient Sages have called it the Mother of the Metals, and hence, being itself a metal, it must contain a two-fold metallic substance, namely, the inner substance of the Moon, and that of the Sun (which is unlike the other. Of these two substances mercury is formed, and they are cherished in its body in the form of spiritual essences. Now, as soon as Nature has formed that mercury of these two spirits, she strives to transmute them into a perfect bodily form ; and therefore, when those two spirits have grown up, and their two varieties of seed awake, they desire to assume their own proper bodies ; and then the Mother, mercury, must die, and having died a natural death, can never be quickened any more into that which it was previously.
Vainglorious and arrogant .Alchemists have obscurely hinted that perfect and imperfect bodies must be transmuted into fluid mercury, but.this assertion is only a trap for the unwary. lt is true that mercury consumes imperfect metals, like lead and tin, and thus increases in quantity ; but, by doing so, it loses its perfection, and is no longer the mercury that it was before. If, indeed, it could be so mortified by a chemical process as to shut out all hope of its ever quickening itself again, it would be changed into something else, as happens with cinnabar, or in sublimate. But, when it is coagulated by a chemical process, whether by a swift or a slow method, its two bodies do not assume a permanent form. By the natural process this coagulation is indeed successfully carried out ; and thus we never find a vein of lead, for instance, which does not contain a few permanent grains, at least, of gold and silver. "The first coagulation of mercury is lead, which is most suitable for fixing it, and bringing it to pérfection. For lead is never without some fixed grain of gold and silver, which are impa;ted to it by Nature for the purpose of multiplication and development, as I myself have experienced, and am able to testify. So long as it is in its mercury, and not separated from its mineral, it can continue to increase its substance from the substance of its mercury. But if this fixed grain is taken away, and severed from its mercury (or the mineral in which it is found), it can no longer gain in size. It is with this grain as with the green fruit that is formed on a tree when the blossom has been shed. Ifit is plucked off before it is ripe, it can come to nothing. [fit is left on the tree, it is nourished and increased by the sap and the juice of the parent stem, and thus gradually attains to its proper size, and to maturity. But, until ripeness has been attained, the fruit continues to attract to itself the sap and juice of the tree, that is to say, so long as the connection with the parent tree is not severed.