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Library > The Theater of Terrestrial Astronomy
Of the Mutual Conversion of Elements; How One Element Predominates Over Another; Whence the Substance of the Metals is Generated.
Geber, Morienus, and other Sages have pronounced the conversion of one element into another a very necessary process in the composition of the Stone: convert the elements, and you have what you seek. There are four elements, air, water, fire, earth, with their four qualities, hot, cold, moist, dry. Two are active, air and fire, and two passive, water and earth. Two are light, and two heavy. Contradictory qualities are united only by means of a third. Hot and dry are not contradictory, and therefore form the element of air; cold and dry are not contradictory, and become earth; nor are cold and moist, which constitute water: but hot and cold are united only by means of a medium, viz., dry, as otherwise they would destroy each other. Hence hot and cold are united and separated by dissolving and coagulating the homogeneous quality. Moist and dry, on the other hand, are united and separated by constriction and humectation; simple generation and natural transmutation are by the operation of the elements. For those elements which conquer cold generate that which is hot. It is clear that all things are generated by heat and cold; and all elements must belong to the same genus, or else they could not act on each other. After creating the matter of the metals, namely, living Mercury, Nature added to it an active quality. For Mercury, the substance, could not of itself manifest its effects, and Nature wisely joined to it an active kind of mineral earth, unctuous and fat, thickened by long digestion in the mineral caverns of the earth, which is commonly called Sulphur. This Mercury is, however, not the common metal. but the principle and origin of metals. Mercury is the matter, Sulphur the form of metals, natural heat acting on the matter of Mercury, as upon a fit and well adapted subject.
The picture represents a black rock, on the summit of which stand black Saturn; Jupiter, the white kind; Mars, the red soldier; Sol, with a golden head and ruddy neck; Venus, in a green robe; Mercury, with helmet, and red, green, purple, white, yellow, ochre, black gown, and yellow, red, blue wings; the Moon white and black.
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