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It is chiefly to be remembered how I taught you to dissolve Antimony with our Acetum acerrimum, which may be also well done if you dissolve it in our Calcination Water; and after that Antimony is calcined, which hereafter shall be at large treated of, also of the Glue of the Eagle. You must understand that we attribute no other beginning to this accurtation except that where before we took the Blood of the Red Lion and the Glue of the Eagle when they were both destroyed, we now join them sound and not hurt together, that they, living, may mortify and dissolve themselves, which I have fitly called Corporeal Matrimony or the Union, for in this wedlock they die together that they may be vivified in the Celestial Antimony. It is not to be wondered if this work differ from the other, for this pertaineth to the handling of Spirits, the other way to teacheth the manner of making the Elixir of bodies.
That I may plainly reveal all things unto you, take Antimony well ground, half a pound, and as much Mercury Sublimate likewise well ground, and grind them both together upon a marble till you cannot know them one from the another; then set them in a cold place that the matter dissolving may drop into a glass set underneath, for when the matters are well mixed together, then I say that they will both shortly be dissolved; when the water is perfectly dissolved it will be of a greenish colour and loathsome smell.
Put this water with the thick part within into a glass, and let it stand the space of three days in a fixatory under the fire, and in a short time you shall have your dissolvedness of a brownish black colour, and after, that is to say in the aforesaid time, it will be red, something higher than red Lead.
Dissolve this calcined matter in Raymund's Calcinative Water, and when you have dissolved it all into a red liquor, or deep yellow, then is your matter brought well into its Chaos.
Put this liquor into a fit body with an alembick and receiver, and by distillation separate the red oil or the red Mercury from the white body which remaineth in the earth, and if any matter ascend into the head of the alembick, despise it not, but try if it be fixed; and if it be not fixed enough, sublime it till it be fixed.
Whereunto join equal weight of its Soul, for the Celestial Matrimony, and always leave out the earth in the bottom if you have any sublimate fixed; if not, take the white earth remaining in the bottom, with which proceed as before is said, and join the white body with the Soul. When they are thus joined or married, set them to impregnate and revivify in Balneo till it pass through all colours and at last be converted into red, which then is Medicine.
The manner of fermentation and augmentation, both in quantity, quality and projection, is spoken already.
And thus I have opened many choice secrets of the ancient philosophers, and also have amended many things in them. Their writings were rather published to conceal the art than to make it manifest or teach it. Although it pleaseth Hermes Trismegistus, the first writer of this art, both to say and protest that he had never revealed, taught nor prophesied anything of this art to any, except fearing the Day of Judgement or the damnation of his Soul for shunning the danger thereof, even as he received the gift of faith from the Author of faith, so he left it to the faithful. Yet when you read his writings either in his Smaragdine Tablet or in his Apocaled or his Twelve Golden Gates and shall find nothing plain, what shall ye think of such an author? Believe me, all the ancients have concealed the secret of their preparations in the gross work, although they writ most famously of the philosophic operation; therefore I have used my endeavour to try, for out of their writings I found that the Elixir might be made of the planets or metals, and also of mean minerals, which came near to a metallic nature. Then, reading more, I found a certain method amongst them all, as it were with one consent or voice on this wise.
First and principally that bodies should be made incorporeal, that is to say discorporated or discompounded, which then is called Hyle or Chaos. Secondly that out of the Chaodical substance, which is one thing, three elements should be separated and purified.
Thirdly that the separated and purified elements should be joined, the man and the woman, the body and the Soul, heaven and earth, with infinite other names so called that the ignorant might think they were divers, which only were nothing else but water and Salt, or the Body and Spirit or Soul, that is to say white Mercury and Red, which they joined together that a new and pure body might be created in putrefaction and a Microcosmical infant might be created in imitation of the Creation, that is to say, Sulphur of Nature.
Fourthly that it should be fed with Milk, that is to say that its own proper tincture, and afterwards nourished by fermentation, that it may grow to its perfect strength.
Having learned these I began to practise, and in the practice of every body and Spirit I found divers errors; but reading more and trying more, I at last found the manner and true way of dissolving all bodies, separating and conjoining them, finding the composition of their secret of secrets, that is to say Lac Virginis or Acetum acerrimum, and Raymund's Calcining Water, wherewith I dissolved all bodies at pleasure and perfected the gross work. Wherefore I purposed, contrary to the customs of the philosophers, to reveal the whole work lest I, being envious, should be the author of errors like themselves. Therefore I have added their secrets to my own experiments and inventions, which are plainly and truly writ.
Alchemy revealeth and openeth unto us four other secrets.
The first is the Composition of Pearls, far greater and fairer than natural ones, which cannot be perfectly done without the help of the Elixir.
The second is the manner of making precious stones out of ignoble ones, by the same art as we made malleable glass.
The third is the manner of making artificial Carbuncles in imitation of natural ones, which few or none have spoken of.
The fourth is the manner of making Mineral Amber, of which Paracelsus hath only writ in his Book of Vexations of Philosophers and in the last edition of his work in the sixth book of his Archidoxes; but because they cannot be made without the help of the Elixirs, therefore they deserve a place among the Elixirs, where I shall discover the virtue or rather the vice of making Amber.
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