Golden Fleece — Trismosin (Splendor Solis Author), 18th-Century MS

To better explain ourselves and render our proposition
more intelligible, in which exists the substantial form
of putrefaction without the accidental form;
namely, a mixture of red and white, by the particular force
of an internal and natural heat which operates in this egg,
as with brooding hens; But although this
egg is the matter of the hen, the form however
is not substantially or accidentally
contained therein, but rather in potentiality alone;
for putrefaction, which is the principle of
all generation, engenders it with the aid and by the
means of heat. original: "calor agens in humido efficit primo nigredinen, & in sicco albedinen" Heat acting in the moist produces first blackness, and in the dry, whiteness. It is exactly the same for the
natural matter of the stone mentioned above, in which
exists neither the substantial nor accidental form
without the putrefaction or decoction continued heating, which
render it in potentiality what it is afterwards in effect.
It remains now to understand and
make known what habit this putrefaction
so necessary for procreations may have and from where
it principally draws its origin.
Rot or putrefaction is sometimes engendered
by an external heat; preserved in a certain
place of its naturally warm nature, or from the ardor
which is drawn by some means yielding
moisture. This putrefaction is similarly made from a

superfluous cold, when the natural heat comes
to perish and disperse, weaken and corrupt from an
overabundant cold, which is properly a
privation, for each thing abstains from natural
heat, and such rot is certainly made in
cold and moist things. The Philosophers do not treat
this putrefaction at all, but rather the
rot, which is nothing other than moisture or
dryness, by the means of which all dry
things come to resolve themselves, joining fire with
water, as Trevisan Bernard Trevisan, a famous 15th-century alchemist says, to enter
anew and take back their first being, so that
they then intend, according to the characteristic of
their nature, to halt the perfection of their final
form.
In this rot the moisture reunites with a
dryness, yet not so arid that the
moist part does not preserve, mixed together, that which is dry
unto itself; and yet this is properly
a compression of spirits or a certain congelation
of matters. But when the moist comes to
disunite and make an entire separation from the dry, one
must immediately distract the driest part and reduce
it to ashes. Thus the Philosophers understand
that their putrefaction, Siccité Dryness, disruption or dissolution
and calcination reducing a substance to powder through heat are done in such a way, that the
moisture and the natural dry come to rejoin, dissolve,
and reunite together by an abundance of moisture
and dryness, and by an equal proportion of temperature,
so that more easily the things...