Common Salt is thus prepared.

Take of it as much as you wish, and dissolve it in warm water in an iron mortar, and pour the dissolved [salt] through a thick strainer, and filter it into some wooden vessel; and as for that of the salt which remains in the mortar, pour over it again other warm water, as before, until you have all the salt dissolved. Then take that water and boil it down in a leaden vessel, if you have one, if not, then in another, until the water evaporates and the salt returns to its first substance. Then take it and place it in a new pot, and put it in a furnace of calcination, and dry it most thoroughly, and preserve it.

The First Truth in the art.

Let a solution of bodies be made into Quicksilver. Quicksilver is the scum of the decoction of all metals, thickened in the belly of the earth by a decocting sulfurous heat; and according to the sulfurous variety and its multiplicity, diverse metals are procreated in the earth. But their primary matter is one and the same nature alone by divine action, by decoction, greater or lesser, whether scorching or not scorching but tempered; and in this all the philosophers agree. Moreover, a thing is resolved into that from which it is made, and the solution of bodies is the foundation of the art, which

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is not the imbibing of water, but the conversion of bodies into water, from which they were first created, i.e., into quicksilver; just as ice is converted into water. Behold, now you have one element, which is water, and the reduction of that body into primary matter.

The Second Truth.

From water, earth is made; this the philosophers have said, because from the thickness of water, earth is procreated; thus I have another element, which is earth.

The Third Truth.

The earth is cleansed, of which Morienus says: this earth putrefies with its water and is cleansed; when it has been cleansed, by the help of God it directs the whole magistery; of which the philosopher in the Turba says: dip the dry, moisten the dry in the earth, the moist with water. Behold, now I have water and earth whitened with water.

The Fourth Truth.

Water which can be evaporated by sublimation or ascension is itself made earth, having previously been thickened with earth and coagulated; thus I have earth, water, and air. And the philosopher says in the Turba that this is the whitened thing itself. Concerning fire: sublime until the spirit goes out from it, which when