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

joined together might make our Mercurius: And the operations by which they carry this out are sublimations, distillations, calcinations, cohobations, putrefactions, digestions, and many others, all of which are comprehended under one operation, namely under cooking alone. For there is nothing else to be carried out than to cook. For by cooking alone we separate the impure; whence we purify, sublimate, distill, and carry out other similar things, until the fire and water, which battle and wage war among themselves in the Mercurius, join themselves and become friends; Whence that saying:

Make peace between enemies and you will possess the whole Magisterium.

Nor is this to be done with a very strong fire; but with the lightest and softest: For a minor fire grinds everything. Because in the beginning the fire and water joined in the Mercurius are not yet perfectly and absolutely united, they are separated by a strong fire, and if they were separated, they would never be united. Therefore they must be left connected, nor should they be separated from each other; but when joined, they must be cooked and digested among themselves, so that finally they may unite, and pass into the receiving vessel in the form of a most white fat, or most white butter: Whence Flamellus Nicholas Flamel asserts that his vessel, in which the Stone of the Philosophers was, was half-full of the fat of the Mercurial wind, and the foam of the red sea, indicating this butter and impregnated with dissolved gold. Therefore there are not various and different operations in carrying out our Mercurius; But there is only one operation, which is called our cooking, in which the Mercurius is perfected and its fat is separated and perfected by sublimation, and completed by distillation: All of which is nothing but cooking.

CAPUT XIV.

Are Mercury, Salt, and Sulphur inseparably joined in our Butter and fat?

Because our butter and fat are separated by distillation from the superfluous and useless Earth, someone might doubt whether in that distillation Mercurius, Salt, and Sulphur pass over