Manuscript Transmitted to the Serene Duke of Holstein Explaining the Obscure Matters of Alchemists

and cleared of all heterogeneous things, we must dissolve it in a maximum quantity of its own Spirit, which also must be distilled seven times, so that it may likewise be cleared of all its heterogeneous things; and we must putrefy the dissolved substance with its own spirit in a Bath of tepid water for forty days, or for two or three months, until it putrefies and turns black in that bath. Then the matter must be distilled through a Retort in ashes, and upon that which remains at the bottom, the Spirit must be cohobated until it emerges like Milk, and is coagulated in the Receiver into something coagulable in the cold, and soluble and liquefiable in the heat like butter, which must be distilled seven times in new and fresh retorts. And thus you have the true and perfect Mercurius of the Philosophers, which can be fixed by itself by perennial and perpetual cooking into fixed and permanent Salt, which is the true Elixir. If indeed you wish to use this to transform metals, it must be projected onto gold liquefied in a crucible, and thus this salt enters the gold, and is changed into a breakable and friable salt; yet it is soluble and liquefiable by the lightest heat; which indeed, while it is impregnated with gold, when projected onto imperfect things, transmutes them into gold: how and at what time this is to be done will become clear and manifest in the following chapter.

CAPUT XII.

There are very many Chemists who are accustomed to add gold and silver at the beginning of the cooking of our Mercurius, so that the Mercurius may be terminated more quickly into fixed white and red Sulphur. I do not disapprove of this, but with all reins of my mind loosened, I follow their opinion and judgment. For the perfect metals, gold or silver, when added and joined to our Mercurius, cook the Mercurius itself more quickly and terminate it into fixed Sulphur, white or red, which is the end of perfection and the absolute goal of the Chemists. And if the metals