The Most Secret Rosary of the Philosophers

the work of silver designates that which is white, which is formed from the matter of the purest Sun, retaining nothing of its color: yet the Sun itself, in the absence of quicksilver, is deprived of effect, because true generation is made only from matter and form. The entire benefit of this art, therefore, is in Mercury and the Sun, and in Mercury and the Moon: but you need to labor regarding their solution, reducing them to their first matter.

CHAPTER IV.

The first matter of metals is quicksilver, because when they are liquefied, all things are converted into it. It is certain, indeed, that every thing is from that into which it is resolved. Ice is resolved into water by the mediation of heat; it is clear, therefore, that it was water beforehand. Thus all metals can be resolved into quicksilver; therefore they were beforehand quicksilver. Note this, therefore, concerning the resolution of bodies into quicksilver.
Blessed, therefore, be God, the creator of sublime natures, who has given us the reason for destroying and reducing every thing to