Alchemy and Remedies — Chemical Recipes

...has been [done], strain the water with everything that is in it through a linen cloth until it passes through and exits through the cloth; [that is,] of the water, that which has been dissolved in the body. If there is a part which can go out, set it aside; then take what remained in the cloth and again with new water put the aforesaid back on the fire in the aforesaid vessel for a day and a night, as before, and strain as before, and repeat this so many times until the whole Body is converted into water and into the first matter, which is quicksilver. This being done, take the water itself and place it in a glass vessel over a slow fire until you see a blackness appearing on the surface, which you shall remove as finely as you can, and repeat by boiling and removing the blackness on the surface until no blackness appears and the water appears clear; then you have water and earth. Then take that earth and place it in a glass vessel, and pour over it some of the aforesaid water until nothing of the earth sticks out and the aforesaid water floats, and boil on a gentle fire for 10 days; then again add water and boil, and do this henceforth until the earth becomes white and clear. And this is what the philosophers have said: "This earth putrefies with water," which when it has been putrefied, with the help of God the whole magistery will be directed, which, having been cleansed and whitened, as was said,

with the water mediating with the said earth, and it has been thickened and coagulated by heat, let the decoction be made on the fire in a strong cucurbit with an alembic placed on top; let the earth remain calcined. Then take a fourth part of its ferment from any separate body of the imperfect ones; take also three parts of ferment. The ferment is sun and moon, and there is no other ferment. And yet that ferment is dissolved and made into earth just like an imperfect body, and prepared in the same way and the same order; join these together and imbibe with the aforesaid water for three days or more. Then imbibe its water and boil as before, and repeat this so many times until these two bodies are reduced into one, which is determined when the color does not vary in them; then pour over the aforesaid water little by little until it drinks of it as much as it can drink, always adding new water to it. For in that mixture of bodies let the work be had; the spermata are mixed with them, for? it is made from them and is converted into their nature, and by grace it is joined with the aforesaid cleansed bodies, which they could not do before because of their impurity and grossness; and in them it grows and increases its nature, so that in them they may be multiplied by a very great multiplication. L.