Marengus — Chemical Pallas, ca. 1675 Multilingual MS

multiply through seeds, nor can we create metals or those
seeds from nothing in the first place. Furthermore, just as nature requires the seeds of a tree so that
it may generate another tree, likewise we must receive the seed of gold
so that gold may multiply. Let us take, therefore,
gold already produced by nature, and let us strip that the seed from the gold
itself, by vivifying it and by extracting its mercurial portion from that which has been vivified.
Just as the mixture of two materials, the seeds, is required for the generation of an infant, namely the male
and the female which differ in qualities, because
the female is relatively cold and moist compared to the male, while on the contrary the male is hot
and dry. So in the formation of the Stone, the male
and female seeds are joined. The male
sperm, however, is the mercurius auri mercury of gold.
The female is the mercurius medię substantię mercury of the middle substance.
Nature, therefore, supplies all things and through
its own intrinsic power which lies hidden in the seeds,
it accomplishes all things, and Art exists only as the
minister of Nature, and assists it.

Our medicine, therefore, is made from two things of one essence,
because it is made from two mercurial substances, that is,
from the Mercury of the Sun Gold, and from the mercury of middle substance.
When these two Mercuries are mixed, they are called "one Mercury,"
and thus the Stone is said to be composed of one and of two, and because
it is thus composed of two, it is now a mercury having
its own sulfur within itself and in its depths.
Our gold is not the common gold, but it is a living and operative Sol Sun or Gold
because it is gold reduced to its first root. Similarly, our silver is not
the common silver, but argentum vivum living silver or mercury, or the Mercury
of the middle substance, and it is the matrix receiving the soul or
the golden seed. Therefore, common gold and silver, as
they lie, are dead, which is to say they are not operative, nor
multiplicable. Gold must therefore be calcined reduced to powder by heat in the common way,
then philosophically, so that it opens and dissolves well,
and thus a new matter can be united to it which may
vivify it and render it penetrating, as will be clear from what is to be said.
While the Stone lies during long cooking as if
dead in a tomb, and becomes a thirsty powder on account of its excessive
dryness, yet after its putrefaction
and cooking, it rises again to a better life, and we extinguish its
thirst by imbibing it and waxing it with the oleo solis oil of the sun or gold
if there is need for the Red work. Then the Dragon, or the Lion, devours its own tail,
because the Stone drinks its own spirit or soul.