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

The Fifty-First Dictum. HoRFOLCos* saith : Thou hast narrated nothing, O Pandolphus, save the last regimen of this body ! Thou hast, therefore, composed an ambiguous description for readers. But if its regimen were commenced from the beginning, you would destroy this obscurity. Saith the Turba : Speak, therefore, concerning this to posterity, so far as it may please you. And he : It behoves you, investigators of this Art, first to burn coppert in a gentle fire, like that required in the hatching of eggs. For it behoves you to burn it with its humidity lest its spirit be burnt, and let the vessel be closed on all sides, so that its colour [? heat] may be increased, the body of copper be destroyed, and its tingeing spirit be extracted,! concerning which the t Otherwise, " the humidity."

* In the second recension the name is Morfoleus.

J According to the second recension : " when the fire is increased and the vessel sealed elfectually, lest the body of the copper and its flying spirit be extracted."

154 ^^'^ Turba Philosophorum.

envious have said : Take quicksilver out of the Flower of Copper, which also they have called the water of our copper, a fiery venom, and a substance extracted from all things, which further they have termed Ethelia, extracted out of many things.* Again, some have said that when all things become one, bodies are made notbodies, but not-bodies bodies. And know, all ye investigators of this Art, that every body is dissolved with the spirit with which it is mixed, with which without doubt it becomes a similar spiritual thing, and that every spirit which has a tingeing colour of spirits, and is constant against fire, is altered and coloured by bodies. Blessed then be the name of Him who hath inspired the Wise with the idea of turning a body into a spirit having strength and colour, unalterable and incorruptible, so that what formerly was volatile sulphur is now made sulphur not- volatile,

* Otherwise : " which flower of copper they have called our water, and fiery venom extracted from iron."

The Turba Philosophorum. 155

and incombustible ! Know, also, all ye sons of learning, that he who is able to make your fugitive spirit red by the body mixed with it, and then from that body and that spirit can extract the tenuous nature hidden in the belly thereof, by a most subtle regimen, tinges every body, if only he is patient in spite of the tedium of extracting. Wherefore the envious have said : Know that out of copper, after it is humectated by the moisture thereof, is pounded in its water, and is cooked in sulphur, if ye extract a body having Ethelia, ye will find that which is suitable as a tincture for anything. Wherefore the envious have said : Things that are diligently pounded in the fire, with sublimation of the Ethelia, become fixed tinctures. For whatsoever words ye find in any man's book signify quicksilver, which we call water of sulphur,* which also

* Water of sulphur occurs among the ingredients of a recipe cited from Mary in one of the treatises of Zosimus, and in the Detailed Exposition of the Work, the following

156 The Turba Philosophorum.

we sometimes say is lead and copper and copulated coin.