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

persons uncover it, say, once in each week, or once in every ten nights ; in either case, the ultimate perfection of pure water appears at the end of forty days, for then it completely absorbs the humour of the decoction. Therefore, wash the same, and deprive of its blackness, until, the blackness being removed, the stone becomes dry to the touch. Hence the envious have said : Wash the Magnesia with soft water, and cook diligently, until it become earth, and the humour perish. Then it is called copper. Subsequently, pour very sharp vinegar upon it, and leave it to be soaked therein. But this is our copper, which the Philosophers have ordained should be washed with permanent water, wherefore they have said : Let the venom * yellow." M. Berthelot explains that honey signifies mercury, which in the special connection is of course obvious, but it does not follow that this is the significance which was invariably attached to it by the philosophers. As a fact, in later days the term was used to signify the philosophical dissolvent.

• The following explanation is given by M. Berthelot. The Greek los, and Virus, the Latin equivalent, are words

120 The Turba Philosophorum.

be divided into two parts, with one of which burn up the body, and with the other putrefy. And know, all ye seekers after this Science, that the whole work and regimen does not take place except by water, wherefore, they say that the thing which ye seek is one, and, unless that which improves it be present in the said thing, what ye look for shall in no wise take place. Therefore, it behoves you to add those things which are needful, that ye may thereby obtain that which you purpose. The TvRBA answereth: Thou has spoken excellently, O Bonellus ! If it please thee, therefore, finish that which thou art saying ; otherwise repeat it a second time. But he : Shall I indeed repeat these and like things ? O all ye inwhich hadexceedinglydiversemeaning among the ancients. The Virus, according to Pliny, meant certain properties or specific virtues of bodies, such as the odour of copper^ ivory, and sandarac ; the medical action of calx of gold ;. the magnetic virtue communicated to iron by the magnet." Hence the term signified the power and not the operation, or if the operation, then this in all its phases, whether of healing or hurting. los also signified in a special way the oxyde of metals.

The Turba Philosophorum. 121

vestigators of this Art, take our copper ; place with the first part of the water in the vessel; cook for forty days; purify from all uncleanliness; cook further until its days be accomplished, and it become a stone having no moisture. Then cook until nothing remains except faeces.* This done, cleanse seven times, wash with water, and when the water is used up leave it to putrefy in its vessel, so long as may seem desirable to your pufpose. But the envious called this composition when it is turned into blackness that which is sufficiently black, and have said : Rule the same with vinegar and nitre. But that which remained when it had been whitened they called sufficiently white, and ordained that it should be ruled Avith permanent water. Again, when

* The whole mystery is in the scoriae," says Zosimus, in The Diversity of Burnt Copper, and though the remark has a particular application, it was also with alchemists of the nature of a general axiom. So Olympiodorus : "In iact, the negative body par excellence, that which is called black lead, that which the Egyptian prophets desired to know, that which the oracles of the demons have revealed, all these are the scoriae and cinders of Mary,"

122 The Turba Philosophorum.