The Turba Philosophorum (complete) — trans. A. E. Waite (1896)
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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.
scoriae, and mix with cinder of calx, which you have ruled, and with the fseces which you know, moistening with permanent water. Then look and see whether it has become a powder, but if not, roast in a fire stronger than the first fire, until it be pounded. Then imbue with permanent water, and the more the colours vary all the more suffer them to be heated. Know, moreover, that if you take white quicksilver, or the Spume of Luna, and do as ye are bidden, breaking up with a gentle fire, the same is coagulated, and becomes a stone. Out of this stone, therefore, when it is broken up, many colours will appear to you. But probably a misprint for Scoria. Rulandus identifies philosophical gum with Ferment, Mercury, &c. The term is much used in alchemy, and is found in Zosimus, but without explanatory context. The Turba Phihsophorum is not very clear on the subject of the philosophical gum, but it is as clear as the Greek Alchemists, for the Lexicon of Chrysopeia defines gum as the yolk of the egg, speaking philosophically and not literally ; but the treatise on the Nomenclature of the Egg says that the white of egg is gum, among other things, speaking also philosophically, and without regard to the Lexicon.
46 The Turbo, Philosophorum.
herein, if any ambiguity occur to you in our discourse, do as ye are bidden, ruling the same until a white and coruscating stone shall be produced, and so ye find your purpose.
The Fourteenth Dictum. AcsuBOFEN* saith : Master, thou hast spoken without envy, even as became thee, and for the same may God reward thee! Pythagoras sai/A; May God also deliver thee, Acsubofen, from envy ! Then he : Ye must know, O Assembly of the Wise, that sulphurs are contained in sulphurs, and humidity in humidity.t The Turba answereih : The envious, O Acsubofen, have uttered something like unto this ! Tell us, therefore, what is this humidity? And he : Humidity is a venom, and when venom + penetrates a body, it t A Formula of the Greek Alchemists : Sulphurs are mastered by Sulphurs, &c.
* In the second recension the name is Assubeies.
X The theriac and poison of the stone are favourite subjects of discourse among early Latin Alchemists, like Petrus Bonus and, indeed, the sovereign remedy seems with all authors to have had a destructive as well as
The Turba Philosophorum. 47
tinges it with an invariable colour, and in no wise permits the soul to be separated from the body, because it is equal thereto. Concerning this, the envious have said : When one flies and the other pursues, then one seizes upon the other, and afterwards they no longer flee, because Nature has laid hold of its equal, after the manner of an enemy, and they destroy one another. For this reason, out of the sulphureous mixed sulphur is produced a most precious colour, which varies not, nor flees from the fire, when the soul enters into the interior of the body and holds the body together and tinges it. I will repeat my words in Tyrian dye.* Take the Animal which is a constructive aspect. A Syriac treatise, fixed by M. Berthelot as belonging to the tenth or eleventh century, says that " the elixir resembles a poison , because of its violence and subtlety," and Arabian alchemy contains many references to the venenum ignis. The Greek equivalent is ios, and this is recurring continually in the Byzantine Alchemical collection.
* This process, worded in the language of the Tyrian dye, may be compared with a similar recipe for the purple tincture, which occurs at the beginning of the Natural and
48 The Turha Philosophorum.