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

copper until it is whitened in the work ! And know ye also that it is the habit of this sulphur to escape. When, therefore, it flees from its own thick bodies, and is sublimated as a vapour, then it behoves you to retain it otherwise with quicksilver of its own kind, lest it vanish altogether. Wherefore the Philosophers have said, that sulphurs are contained by sulphurs. Know, further, that sulphurs tinge, and then are they certain to escape unless they are united to quicksilver of its own kind. Do not, therefore, think that because it tinges* and afterwards escapes, it is the coin of the Vulgar, for what the Philosophers are seeking is the coin of the Philosophers, which, unless it be mixed with white or red, which is quicksilver of its own kind, would doubtless escape. I direct you, therefore, to mix quicksilver with quicksilver (of its kind) until together they become one clean water composed out i6o The Turba Philosophorum.

* The second recension substitutes " fixes bodies," but both readings are obscure and seemingly corrupt.

of two. This is, therefore, the great arcanum, the confection of which is with its own gum ; it is cooked with flowers in a gentle fire and with earth ; it is made red with mucra and with vinegar, salt, and nitre,* and with mutal is turned into rubigo, or by any of the select tingeing agents existing in our coin.

The Fifty -Third Dictum. ExuMENust saith: The envious have laid waste the whole Art with the multiplicity of names, but the entire work must be the Art of the Coin. For the Philosophers have ordered the doctors of this art to make coin-like gold, which also the same Philosophers have called by all manner of names. The Turba answereth: Inform, therefore, posterity, O Exumenus, concern-

* M. Berthelot explains that the substance referred to under the terms Nitrum and Natron was really Carbonate of Soda, and that Nitre or Saltpetre was scarcely known in antiquity, nor, indeed, till the 6th century, f For this name the second recension substitutes Obsemeganus.

The Turba Philosophorum. i6i

ing a few of these names, that they may take warning ! And he : They have named it salting, sublimating, washing, and pounding Ethelias, whitening in the lire, frequently cooking vapour and coagulating, turning into rubigo, the confection of Ethel, the art of the water of sulphur and coagula. By all these names is that operation called which has pounded and whitened copper. And know ye, that quicksilver is white to the sight, but when it is possessed by the smoke of sulphur, it reddens and becomes Cambar. Therefore, when quicksilver is cooked with its confections it is turned into red, and hence the Philosopher saith that the nature of lead is swiftly converted. Do you not see that the Philosophers have spoken without envy ? Hence we deal in many ways with pounding and reiteration, that ye may extract the spirits existing in the vessel, which the fire did not cease to burn continuously. But the

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i62 The Turba Philosophorum.