origin from the supernatural. Then, after having learned by good proof and certain reason, he will be able to overcome those who do not presently believe what is supernatural. Also, he will be able to confound the opinion of many who dispute natural things; because they do not know the foundation, their disputes are nothing but great babble and useless discourse.

On the First Root

and Tincture of Metals

Chapter 2.

In order that I may pursue my intention and accomplish, by divine permission, my undertaking to give instruction on the first tincture, root, and generation of metals and minerals: it must be known that the tincture of all metals is seated upon a supernatural, volatile, fiery spirit which maintains itself from the air, seeks its natural habitation in the earth and the water where it can rest and operate. This spirit is found in all metals, but more abundantly in other metals than in gold, for the body of gold is so compact and tight

because of its great fixity and maturity that nothing more can enter into it than what it needs. But the bodies of the other metals are not so fixed, for their pores are more open and greatly dilated, so that the ignigene fire-born spirit can penetrate and possess them more abundantly. But since the other metals have a volatile and inconstant body, the tincture cannot remain in them, but is constrained to leave them.

And because the tincture of gold is found more abundantly in nothing else than in Venus copper and Mars iron, as man and woman: their bodies are destroyed and their fire-born spirits are chased out of them. These enrich the blood of the prepared and opened gold and make it volatile by their food and drink. Thus, this volatile gold being satiated with its own food and blood, it will take to itself its own blood and dries itself out by its own interior heat with the help of the vaporous fire. And once again a victory is made which is entirely fixed and greatly penetrating, so that the gold becomes a very fixed medicine because of the superfluity of the blood, which can give no body if one does not add a body to it again.