Alchemy and Remedies — Chemical Recipes

...that to sublimate is to ascend upwards. And they [the deluded] take calcined bodies and mix them with sublimated spirits, namely ☿ [Mercury], Sulfur, and sal ammoniac, and they use a strong and sudden 🜂 [fire] to make the bodies ascend; they sublimate with spirits and say that then the bodies are sublimated, but they are deceived, because these bodies afterwards become black and foul just as before. Whence our sublimation is not to ascend upwards, but the sublimation of the Philosophers is to make something high and a great thing from a thing that is coarse and corrupt, namely, to make it pure and subtle, which is what our water does to itself.

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Water also mortifies and vivifies, and it makes black colors appear during mortification while it is converted into earth; and at first various colors appear before the whitening, because when the end of the whitening is reached in the mixing—in the water of the separated body and of the ferment—infinite colors appear, and as many as can be imagined.

And Morienus says that the preparation of our mastery is likened in its order to the generation of man: for first there is Coitus; second, Conception; third, Pregnancy; fourth, Birth; fifth, Nourishment. These words make it understood that our sperm is argentum vivum [mercury] with the earth, and it is joined

to the imperfect body, which is called Mother Earth, because earth is the mother of all elements; and then it is called Coitus. When the earth begins to retain some of the ☿ [mercury] within itself, it is called Conception. And then the male acts upon the female, that is, the mercury upon the earth. And this is why the mastery of the Philosophers is called nothing other than the male and the female, and their animation by means of the water, that is, argentum vivum. And the earth grows, and is multiplied, and is augmented; and when it is whitened, then it is named Pregnancy. Thereafter the ferment is joined with the imperfect body until they become one in color and appearance, and then it is called Birth. For then our Stone is born, which is called the King by the Philosophers; for the Philosopher says in the Turba: “Honor our King coming from the fire, crowned with a diadem”; whose father is ☉ [the Sun], and whose mother is indeed ☽ [the Moon]—the Moon for the imperfect body, the Sun for the perfect body. Finally and lastly there follows the nourishment, until it is increased; it is nourished with a great augmentation by its own milk, with which it was imbued from the beginning. Therefore, let it drink the ☿ [mercury] often and as many times as suffices.

Now you have the solution of the body and its reduction into its first matter; then its conversion into earth; and afterwards its whitening and its levigation into air, because then the humidity found in it, which is to be distilled, becomes airy, which ascends, and the calcined earth remains; and then from the native fire you have [the result].