Chemical-Philosophical Treatise on Natural and Supernatural Things

The beginning, therefore, that concerns the spirit of this mercury, you do not need to know, provided you observe that its beginning is supernatural, granted to it from the stars and elements from the time of creation, so that it may enter into the earthly thing. Because that is necessary, as I have warned, leave celestial things to the soul and grasp them with faith; send away the stellar things too, since such stellar impressions are invisible and incomprehensible. The elements have also already brought the spirit into the light through nourishment, therefore pass over them as well, since no one besides GOD can produce the elements. Rely solely on your labored spirit, now a participant in form and experienced in form, comprehensible and incomprehensible, yet visibly presented. Thus you will have enough of the first matter from which all metals and minerals were born. It is one thing, and such is the matter which, being united with the sulphur of the following chapter and with the salt of the fifth chapter, enters into coagulation, so that a body may result from it and the perfect medicine of all metals, which not only generates in the earth, as in the macrocosm, in the beginning, but also through the vaporous body, transmutes it together with augmentation in the microcosm. Do not, therefore, wonder at what the Highest has permitted and nature strives to do.