The Turba Philosophorum (complete) — trans. A. E. Waite (1896)

nor the common without the precious. It behoves you, therefore, O all ye investigators of this Art, to follow the sayings of Victimerus,* when he said to his disciples : Nothing else helps you save to sublimate water and vapour. And the Turba : The whole work is in the vapour and the sublimation of water. Demonstrate, thierefore, to them the disposition of the vapour. And he : When ye shall perceive that the natures have become water by reason of the heat of the fire, and that they have been purified, and that the whole body of Magnesia is liquefied as water; then all things have been made vapour, and rightly, for then the vapour contains its own equal, wherefore the envioust call either vapour, because both are joined in decoctions, and one contains the other. Thus our stag finds no path to escape, although flight be essential to

• " Of the elders," says the second recension, t The second recension substitutes " The Philosophers," a variation which, in its way, is significant.

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it. The one keeps back the other, so that it has no opportunity to fly, and it finds no place to escape ; hence all are made permanent, for when the one falls, being hidden in the body, it is congealed with it, and its colour varies, and it extracts its nature from the properties which God has infused into His elect, and it alienates it, lest it flee. But the blackness and redness appear, and it falls into sickness, and dies by rust and putrefaction ; properly speaking, then, it has not a flight, although it is desirous to escape servitude ; then when it is free it follows its spouse, that a favourable colour may befall itself and its spouse ; its beauty is not as it was, but when it is placed with coins, it makes them gold. For this reason, therefore, the Philosophers have called the spirit and the soul vapour. They have also called it the black humid wanting perlution ; and forasmuch as in man there are both humidity and dryness, thus our work, which the envious have concealed, is nothing else

114 ^'Ae Turba Philosophorum.

but vapour and water. The Turba answereth : Demonstrate vapour and water ! And he : I say that the work is out of two ; the envious have called it composed out of two, because these two become four, wherein are dryness and humidity, spirit and vapour. The TvRBX answereth: Thou hast spoken excellently, and without envy. Let Zimon next follow.

The Thirty-Sixth Dictum. Afflontus,* the Philosopher, saith: I notify to you all, O ye investigators of this Art, that unless ye sublime the substances at the commencement by cooking, without contrition of hands, until the whole become water, ye have not yet found the work. And know ye, that the copper was formerly called sand, but by others stone, and, indeed, the names vary in every regimen. Know further, that the nature and humidity become water, then a stone, if ye cause them to be

* The name in the second recension is Assotes.

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well complexionated, and if ye are acquainted with the natures, because the part which is light and spiritual rises to the top, but that which is thick and heavy remains below in the vessel. Now this is the contrition of the Philosophers, namely, that which is not sublimated sinks down, but that which becomes a spiritual powder rises to the top of the vessel, and this is the contrition of decoction, not of hands. Know also, that unless ye have turned all into powder, ye have not yet pounded them completely. Cook them, therefore, successively until they become converted, and a powder. Wherefore Agadaimon*