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.
sublimate five times in a vessel. Next join to a fire of dung, and cook, when these colours shall appear to you : On the first day black citrine, on the second black red, on the third like unto a dry crocus,* finally, the purple colour will appear to you ; the ferment and the coin of the vulgar shall be imposed ; then is the Ixir composed out of the humid and the dry, and then it tinges with an invariable tincture. Know also that it is called a body wherein there is gold. But when ye are composing the Ixir, beware lest you extract the same hastily, for it lingers.t Extract, therefore, the same as an Ixir. For this venom is, as it were, birth and life, because it is a soul extracted out of many things, and imposed upon coins :l its tincture, f The second recension substitutes : " Beware lest you extract the spirit in haste, tor perchance it will perish."
* The preferable reading is : " Crocus like unto sericus."
} The second recension reads : — " And the soul shall remain, a tincture extracted out o{ many things, and imposed upon coins."
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therefore, is life to those things with which it is joined, from which it removes evil, but it is death to the bodies from which it is extracted. Accordingly, the Masters have said that between them there exists the same desire as between male and female, and if any one, being introduced to this Art, should know these natures, he would sustain the tediousness of cooking until he gained his purpose according to the will of God.
The Twenty-Seventh Dictum. Gregorius* saiih : O all ye Turba, it is to be observed that the envious have called the venerable stone Efflucidinus,t and they have ordered it to be ruled until it coruscates like marble in its splendour. + And t Antimony, in the second recension. The most bizarre terms of the Turba did not find favour with Western Alchemists ; Efflucidinus is a special instance in point. It is difficult to speak with complete authority, but it may be said almost certainly that no later author made use of it. Moreover, no vocabulary mentions it.
* The name in the second recension is Chambar.
X The comparison of the Stone in its splendour to gleaming marble is found, among other of the Greek go The Turba Philosophorum.
they : Show, therefore, what it is to posterity. Then he: Willingly; you must know that the copper is commingled with vinegar, and ruled until it becomes water. Finally, let it be congealed, and it remains a coruscating stone with a brilliancy like marble, which, when ye see thus, I direct you to rule until it becomes red, because when it is cooked till it is disintegrated and becomes earth, it is turned into a red colour. When ye see it thus, repeatedly cook and imbue it until it assume the aforesaid colour, and it shall become hidden gold. Then repeat the process, when it will become gold of a Tyrian colour. It behoves you, therefore, O all ye investigators of alchemists, in Zosimus, and especially in his Detailed Exposition of the Worh, where, however, he is quoting Democritus. " Mark the Philosopher, seized with a divine transport, on the subject of this white sulphur: If the preparation become like unto marble, then is there a great mystery." And again, having cited Stephanus, he proceeds : " Now, that which tinges tinctures and tinged substances, the same is divine water, the great mystery, which is like unto marble."
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this Art, when ye have observed that this Stone is coruscating, to pound and turn it into earth, until it acquires some degree of redness ; then take the remainder* of the water which the envioust ordered you to divide into two parts, and ye shall imbibe themJ several times until the colours which are hidden by no body appear unto youJ Know also that if ye rule it ignorantly, ye shall see nothing of those colours. I knew a certain person who commenced this work, and operated the natures of truth, who, when the redness was somewhat slow in appearing, imagined that he had made a mistake, and so relinquished the work.|| Observe, therefore, how ye make the conjunct The opprobrious term is omitted by the second recension, and the reference seems to be to the division of the water indicated in an earlier part of the colloquy. { The second recension substitutes " sand." § Otherwise : " until the hidden colours shall appear." II A common anecdote of the alchemists, reproduced
* Otherwise: " a small quantity."