Constans warns the reader not to multiply things, "for the envious have multiplied" them; they "described various regimens that" might deceive, and named the matter after "every stone and metal, gall of animals" and the creatures of sea and sky. In the same breath he states his own rule in cover names: in the art of gold is the "quicksilver from Cambar", in coins the quicksilver of the Male, and the two are one. Ten dicta earlier the assembly orders Attamus to call Rubigo by its true name, and he answers with the leech. The Turba presents itself as plain speech against the envious, yet speaks in the code it condemns. Its complaints about concealment belong to the convention and do not exempt the book from it.
The Turba Philosophorum (complete) — trans. A. E. Waite (1896)
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The Fifty-Sixth Dictum. CoNSTANS saith: What have you to do with the treatises of the envious, for it is necessary that this work should deal with four things? They answer: Demonstrate, therefore, what are those four ? And he : Earth, water, air, and fire. Ye have then those four elements without which nothing is ever generated, nor is anything absolved in the Art. Mix, therefore, the dry with the humid, which are earth and water, and cook in the fire and in the air, whence the spirit and the soul are dessicated.* And know ye that the tenuous tingeing agent takes its power out of the tenuous part of the earth, out of the tenuous part of the fire and of the air, while out of the tenuous part of the water, a tenuous spirit has been dessicated. + This, therefore, is the process of our work, t The second recension merely says that the power in question is derived from the tenuous part of the earth, air, and water.
* According to the second recension: "The spirit is dessiccated in the soul."
The Turba Philosophorum. 167
namely, that everything may be turned into earth when the tenuous parts of these things are extracted, because a body is then composed which is a kind of atmospheric thing, and thereafter tinges the imposed body of coins.* Beware, however, O all ye investigators of this art, lest ye multiply things, for the envious have multiplied and destroyed for you ! They have also described various regimens that they might deceive ; they have further called it (or have likened it to) the humid with all the humid, and the dry with all the dry, by the name of every stone and metal, gall of animals of the sea, the winged things of heaven and reptiles of the earth. But do ye who would tinge observe that bodies are tinged with bodies. For I say to you what the Philosopher said briefly and truly at the beginning of his book. In the art of gold is the quicksilver from Cambar, and in coins
• The reading of the second recension has been partly substituted in this unintelligible passage.
1 68 The Turba Philosophorum.
is the quicksilver from the Male. In nothing, however, look beyond this, since the two quicksilvers are also one.
The Fifty-Seventh Dictum. AcRATus* saith : I signify to posterity that I make philosophy near to the Sun and Moon. He, therefore, that will attain to the truth let him take the moisture of the Sun and the Spumet of the Moon. I The Turba answereth : Why are you made an adversary to your brethren ? And he : I have spoken nothing but the truth. But they : Take what the Turba hath taken. And he: I was so intending, yet, if you are willing, I direct posterity to take a part of the coins which the Philosophers have ordered, which also Hermes has adapted to t Otherwise the spirit ; it is probably a misreading.
* In the second recension the name is Astratus.
{ This one of the two passages which seem to indicate any planetary attribution of the metals, but even here it may be an analogy borrowed from the astronomy of the period without any real attribution. The distinction between mercury and quicksilver in the 67th Dictum should be noted.
The Turba Philosophorum. 169