The Turba Philosophorum (complete) — trans. A. E. Waite (1896)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (A. E. Waite). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
(or join to) the Ethelias, they become clean and fixed things. And know ye that quicksilver is a fire burning the bodies, mortifying and breaking up, with one regimen, and the more it is mixed and pounded with the body, the more the body is disintegrated, while the quicksilver is attenuated and becomes living. For when ye shall diligently pound fiery quicksilver and cook it as required, ye will possess Ethel, a fixed nature* and colour, subject to eveiy tincture, which also overcomes, breaks, and constrains the fire.t For this reason it does not colour things unless it be coloured, and being coloured it colours. + And know that no body can tinge itself unless its spirit be extracted from the secret belly thereof, when it becomes a body and soul witht Alternatively, " all bodies," which seems a preferable reading.
* That is, according to the second recension, " one which does not flee from the fire."
\ The second recension says that " it holds and colours all spirits, because Ethelia tinges all things when once it has been itself tinged."
86 The Turba Philosophorum.
out the spirit,* which is a spiritual tincture, out of which colours have manifested, seeing that a dense thing does not tinge a tenuous, but a tenuous nature colours that which enters into a body. When, however, ye have ruled the body of copper, and have extracted from it a most tenuous (subject), then the latter is changed into a tincture by which it is coloured.! Hence has the wise man said, that copper does not tinge unless first it be tinged. And know that those four bodies which you t In his treatise On Virtiu and Interpretation, Zosimus cites Democritus to the effect that copper does not tinge, but that copper burnt by means of oil of natron, and having undergone this treatment repeatedly, becomes more beautiiul than gold. " Copper does not tinge so long as it preserves an unique essence, but it tinges by its combination with other bodies. How then, if this combination be wanting, and before the copper has been tinged, can one succeed in tingeing objects made subject to the action ot fire 1 "
* This distinction between the soul and the spirit is recognised by Zosimus, who tollows Democritus. The soul is the primitively sulphureous and caustic nature. The purifying influence of fire preserves the spirit when the operation has been conducted according to the rules of Art. The spirit is the useful part, the tingeing element. — The Four Metallic Bodies, d;c.
The Turba Phitosopliorum. 87
are directed to rule are this copper, and that the tinctures which I have signified unto you are the condensed and the humid,* but the condensed is a conjoined vapour, and the humid is the water of sulphur, for sulphurs are contained by sulphurs, and rightly by these things Nature rejoices in Nature, and overcomes, and constrains.
The Twenty-Sixth Dictum.
Zenon saith: I perceive that you, O crowd of the Wise, have conjoined two bodies, which your Master by no means ordered you to do ! The Turba answereth : Inform us according to your own opinion, O Zenon, in this matter, and beware of envy ! Then he : Know that the colours which shall appear to you out of it are these. Know, O Sons of the Doctrine, that it behoves you to allow the composition to putrefy for forty days, and then to
* The second recension reads: "The condensed and the humid are these two tinctures, the condensed being joined with the humid."
88 The Turba Philosophorum.