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

to recognize original: "ex ungue leonem"; meaning: "the lion by its claw", as they say, breathing under the hard burden of our greatest labors to gaily surmount them by the hope and the assured aspect of a happy and favorable beginning.
original: "Dimidium facti qui bene cœpit habet"; meaning: "He who has begun well has half the deed done"
The black key of the reciprocal mutations of these various forms opens the cabinet of natural Secrets, to sound the sweetness and the maturity of the fruit of the Colchian Isle Colchis, the land of the Golden Fleece in Greek mythology, which the dragon and the devouring lion guard, compared to the pursuit of our work.

To reach the goal of our sacrifice,
one must by steps follow the path,
advancing little by little.

Galienus speaks sufficiently of the variety and difference of this fruit, making ample mention to us of a herb that he names after several, Lunatica Moonwort, a plant often associated with the moon and silver in alchemy, of a stem quite different from common ones, and which draws its root from an earthly metal, reddening in part, but surrounded by a black color, or properly spotted, easy nonetheless to corrupt and disfigure itself, as if wanting to abandon its ordinary forces to be reborn much more beautiful and more perfect, at the renewal of its richest flowers come to their right term, which seventy-two hours later meeting under the angle of Mercury changes to the perfect white of a very pure moon and converted once more, letting itself boil some

little longer by decoction, into gold of such alloy that it changes into its nature the hundredth part of Mercury; but gold much more perfect than the force of the Earth can produce in its metallic mines. Virgil says as much in the sixth of his Aeneid, speaking of a Tree with golden branches that he makes his Trojan Prince encounter during his long navigations; a tree of such excellence that it never died, but another by being born continually from it, and succeeding the first by the multiplication of itself just like another Phoenix, entered into its place.

A hand-colored ink drawing depicts a scene of alchemical allegory. On the right, a man in a red tunic and cap climbs a tall wooden ladder leaning against a leafy green tree with golden fruits. Two white birds are perched or flying among the upper branches. On the left, two figures observe the scene: one is dressed in a long red robe with a yellow collar and a crown-like headpiece, likely a king or magus, and the other wears a shorter yellow and red tunic with a red cap.