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.
OPI. c QUSVEVELIN LS RAT CT 17 origin in a rectified and well constituted body. Thus also we see one horse excel the strength and speed of another ; and it is the same with all kinds of living beings. Alike rule holds good to an even greater degree in regard to plants and trees— with trees, by transplanting, grafting, and kindred methods well familiar to gardeners ; while as to other vegetable natures, we are taught by daily experience how plants and flowers of the same kind differ from each other in glory, in beauty, in fragrance, and savour. Of this cloves and tulips afford a striking instance. Into how many different species have these flowers been developed ; and even these new developments are being made more beautiful from ' day to day, and it is universally admitted that never were there such fine and fragrant flowers before. What am I to say about metals which have a common substance, namely, quicksilver, digested and consolidated by the power of sulphur? Concerning this common substance, Richard the Englishman has the following words: * Nature has elaborated all kinds of fusible things by a natural process out of mercury, and the substance of its sulphur, because it is the property of quicksilver to be consolidated by steam, as by the heat of white and red sulphur which does not burn."
The same view is expressed by Arnold (pt. r., Gp db) * Quicksilver is the elementary form of all things fusible ; for all things fusible, when melted, are changed into it, and it mingles with them because it is of the same substance with them. Such bodies differ from quicksilver in their composition only so far as itself is or is not free from the foreign matter of impure sulphur." Similarly Rosinus (42 Saratantaz) says : * The substance of all metals in the heart of the earth is solidified and imperfect quicksilver; for by the quickening heat of sulphur different metals (according to the different varieties of sulphur) are generated in the earth ; their original substance is one and the same, and is modified only by a greater or smaller external influence." Hence we see daily how busily Nature is occupied in bringing them to mortification and perfection. Now the perfection of metals and the final intention of Nature in regard to them, is gold. For all metals shew that Nature has done something for them towards ultimate perfection ; no metal is so base as not to contain a single grainofgoldorsilver Naturewould always changequicksilver that
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has within itself its own sulphur into gold, if she were not often hindered by some outward impediment, viz, impure, fcetid, and combustible sulphur. In most cases gold is dug out pure, clear, free from. dross, and unmixed with any other metals But most frequently a large quantity of foreign sulphur mingles with the quicksilver, and thus prevents its perfect development ; and, according to the variety of that sulphur, different kinds of metals are generated, as Aristotle says (4. Meteor.): *If the quicksilver be of a good substance but the sulphur impure and combustible, it changes the quicksilver into brass. If the quicksilver be stony, impure, and earthy, and the sulphur not pure, it becomes iron. Tin seems to have good and pure quicksilver; but the sulphur is bad and not well mixed. Lead has gross, bad, and ill-smelling quicksilver, and is thus not properly coagulated."