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Again: "The reason why all metals must be reduced to the nature of vapour is because we see that all are generated of quicksilver, though the mediation of which they came into being."
Gratianus: "Purify Laton, i.e., copper(ore), with Mercury, for Laton is of gold and silver, a compound, yellow, imperfect body."
"The Sounding of the Trumpet": "Common Mercury is called a spirit. If you do not resolve the body into Mercury, with Mercury, you cannot obtain its hidden virtue."
"Art of Alchemy," chapter vi.: "The second part of the Stone we call living Mercury, which, being living and crude, is said to dissolve bodies, because it adheres to them in their innermost being. This is the Stone without which Nature does nothing."
"Rosary": "Mercury never dies, except with its brother and sister. When Mercury mortifies the matter of the Sun and Moon, there remains a matter like ashes."
The Sage of Trevisa: "Add nothing above ground for digesting and thickening Mercury into the nature of gold or of metals." Again: "This solution is possible and natural, that is to say, by Art as handmaid to Nature, and is unique and necessary in the work; but it is brought about only by quicksilver, in such proportions as commend themselves to a good workman who knows the inmost properties of Nature."
"Art of Alchemy": "Who can sufficiently extol Mercury, for Mercury alone has power to reduce gold to its first nature?"
From these quotations it is clear what the Sages meant by their water, and what they thought of this wonderful liquid, viz., Mercury, to which they ascribed all power in the Magistery, for nothing can be perfected outside its own genus. Men digest vegetables, not in the blood of animals, but in water which is their first principle, nor are minerals affected by the vegetable liquid. In the words of the "Sounding of the Trumpet": "The whole Magistery consists in dividing the elements from the metals, and purifying them, and in separating the sulphur of Nature from the metals."
Furthermore, as Hermes says, only homogeneous substances cohere, and only they can produce offspring after their own kind, i.e., if you want a medicine which is to generate metals, its origin must be metallic, since "species are tinged by their genus," as the philosopher testifies.
In short, our Magistery consists in the union of the male and female, or active and passive, elements through the mediation of our metallic water and a proper degree of heat. Now, the male and female are two metallic bodies, and this I will again prove by irrefragable quotations from the Sages:
Dantius bids us prepare the bodies and dissolve them.
Rhasis: "Change the bodies into water, and the water into earth: then all is done."
Galienus: "Prepare the bodies, and purify them of the blackness in which is corruption, till the white becomes white and red, then dissolve both, etc."
Calid (chapter i.): "If you do not make the bodies subtle, so that they may be impalpable to touch, you will not gain your end. If they have not been ground, repeat your operation, and see that they are ground and subtilized. If you do this, you will be directed to your desired goal."
Aristotle: "Bodies cannot be changes except by reduction into their first matter."
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