The Golden Fleece

...the goal of our work. If the same does not happen to these metallic bodies, if they do not lose their first and natural being to take on more luster and perfection in our work, the first matter being destroyed by introducing another through generation, it is to labor in vain, and to dissipate one's vigils and oil only to bark at the wind.

A colored manuscript illustration is set within a red rectangular frame. On the left, a nude man with reddish-brown skin sits on a green landscape; his posture expresses despair. On the right, a standing female figure with large, multi-colored wings resembling peacock feathers wears a golden crown and a white gown decorated with red and gold floral motifs. A large, six-pointed golden star shines in the blue sky above her.

An unfortunate man, fallen from the sweet zephyrs of his happiness and sent back to the cruel tortures of a very filthy Cloaque a sewer or cesspool, appeared as black as a confirmed More Moor, a reference to the "nigredo" or blackening stage of alchemy, palpitating in his pain, and...

The Golden Fleece

...out of breath, because of the harsh efforts he borrows from himself, sparing none of his strengths that he might employ for the salvation of his life, and for the deliverance of his body relegated to the infected prisons of this muddy mire full of filth. But his too-weak power being unable to second the vow of his desires to leave this place, and seeing himself in vain to have importuned Heaven with cries and the help of his industry to develop himself from such a villainous dungeon, he had all the leisure to wait in his misery for the last stroke of a cruel death. He did so without begging further for the favorable help of some benevolent soul full of charity to draw him to the pitiful compassion of his piteous disorder. Nor could he well resolve, although by force, to sadly finish the brevity of his days, fatefully dogged by the darkest misfortunes of this foul and shadowy Sewer, since everyone made themselves deaf to the cries of his complaint, showing toward him a heart more hardened and full of felony than an insensible Rock would have done.
Hope of a desired Salvation being vain,
his goal no longer aspires but to the inhuman boat a reference to Charon's ferry to the underworld
when quite timely a young Beauty
arrived to his aid, full of humanity.
This Lady was beautiful by excellence in both body and face, enriched with superb clothes of various colors, having beautiful white feathers but variegated like those of a peacock, which extended...