The Golden Fleece or Golden Treasure and Art Chamber

Splendor Solis.

The Second Parable.

Hermes Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary founder of alchemy., the first master of this Art, speaks thus: the water of the air, which is between heaven and earth, is the life of every thing. For through its moisture and warmth, it serves as the medium between the two opposites, such as fire and water. This same water has rained down upon the earth; the heavens have opened themselves and dewed upon the earth, whereby the earth has become sweet, like honey, and moistened.

This same blood original: "Blût"; here referring to the "sap" or life-force of the earth rather than literal blood. produces many kinds of colors and fruits. In the midst of it has grown a great tree with a silver trunk, which spreads itself to the ends of the world. Upon its branches have sat many kinds of birds, which all flew away toward the dawn, and the Raven’s Head original: "Rappen Haupt"; this signifies the Nigredo or black stage of the alchemical process, which here begins its transformation into the white stage (Albedo). has become white.

This same tree produces many kinds of fruit: the first are the finest pearls; the second is called by the philosophers Foliated Earth Terra foliata; a purified, white state of matter that has been refined through repeated "leaves" or layers of distillation.; the third is the finest gold.

This tree also gives fruits of health: it makes warm what is cold, and what is warm it makes cold. It makes the dry moist, and the moist dry. It makes the hard soft, and the soft hard. This is the end of the whole Art. Regarding this, the Author of the Three Words Likely referring to a specific Hermetic text or the author of the Tractatus Aristotelis. speaks of the three moist stones—three precious words of the whole mastership.

This is also what Salienus means when he speaks of the herb Moonwort Lunatica or Bera; a plant often associated with the moon and silver-making in medieval folklore.. Its root is a metallic earth; it has a red stem, essentially covered or spotted with blackness, and it also diminishes easily. It gains or receives blossoms in time; after three days, if one places this into Mercury, it transforms into a perfect silver, and if one fires it further, it turns into gold. That same gold transforms one hundred parts into the finest gold.

Virgil reports of this tree in the sixth book of the Aeneid, where he speaks in his fable of how Aeneas and Silvius The text likely refers to the Sibyl who guided Aeneas to the Golden Bough. went to a tree, and when a branch was plucked, another grew in the same place.