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.
* " When thou hast attained, my child, to the understanding of these things by way of a pieliminaiy, consider creation and generation as a whole, and know that man is able to bring forth man, the lion begets the lion, and the dog procreates the dog. Should it happen that a creature is produced contrary to nature, it is a monster which is engendered, and the same hath no consistence. Nature charms nature, and nature triumphs through nature. The adepts having participated in the divine power, and having succeeded by the divine assistance, illuminated by the fruit of the prayers of Isis, made preparations with certain metallic minera, without having recourse to other (unsuitable) substances. Thus they succeeded by means of the substantial nature in triumphing over the matter employed in the preparations. In fact, even as I have previously said that wheat begets wheat, and man sows man, so also gold serves for the increase of gold, and like things generally for the reproduction of their like. Now hath the mystery been revealed."— /«« to Horut.
96 The Turba PMlosophorum.
out of no other. Know also that unless you seize hold of this Nature and rule it, ye will obtain nothing. Join, therefore, that male, who is son to the red slave,* in marriage with his fragrant wife, which having been done, Art is produced between them ; add no foreign matter unto these things, neither powder nor anything else ; that conception is sufficient for us, for it is near, yet the son is nearer still. + How exceeding precious is the nature of
♦ The allegory ot the Servus Fugitivus abounds in later alchemy, and is found also in old Arabian treatises, such as the Twelve Chapters of Oatanes : " They have defined this Stone by saying that it is running water and permanent water ; burning fire and frozen fire ; dead earth ; hard stone and soft stone. It is the fiying slave, the swift and the stable ; the thing which makes and is made," &c. In the Speculum Majus of Vincent de Beauvais it appears as a synonym of Mercury, which of course is an obvious symbolism. Rulandus attributes it to some treatise ascribed to Hermes. According to other lexicons, the Red Servant is the matter from which the Philosophers extract their Mercury, which must therefore be the marriageable son rnentioned in the text above. The fugitive rUe of Mercury is referred to in the Greek fragment on The Fabrication ef the All, as already cited.
t The second recension reads : "A true son is begotten."
The Turba Philosophorum. 97
that red slave, without which the regimen cannot endure ! Bacsen saith :
0 Diomedes, thou hast publicly revealed this disposition ! He answereth :
1 will even shed more light upon it. Woe unto you who fear not God, for He may deprive you of this art ! Why, therefore, are you envious towards your brethren ? They answer : We do not flee except from fools ; tell us, therefore, what is thy will ? And he : Place Citrine with his wife after the conjunction into the bath ; do not kindle the bath excessively, lest they be deprived of sense and motion ; cause them to remain in the bath until their body, and the colour thereof, shall become a certain unity, whereupon restore unto it the sweat thereof; again suffer it to die ; then give it rest, and beware lest ye evaporate them by burning them in too strong a fire. Venerate the king and his wife,* and
* According to Rulandus, the King is the spiritual water which gives moisture to the female, but there are many meanings. This passage is the fountain-head of the whole symbolism of the alchemical marriage, which is
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gS The Turba Philosophorum.