Fridrichstadt Leisure, or the Chemical Tantalus

Volume of the Curious Journals, which contains Centuries V & VI, and which I observed communicated by the most Excellent Godofredus Heldius, Century VI, Observation LXXXVII, p. 365, in which observation the opinions of great men are also adduced concerning the Doves of Diana, which opinions are so frivolous that one might deservedly receive them with a laugh. Hermes Trismegistus expresses the Doves of Diana in his Emerald Tablet by this axiom of his: what is above is the same as what is below; to the wise man, enough has been said. I do not wonder that mercury has been extracted from Vitriol, although it is a rare experiment. A fulcrum for this assertion is provided by Agricola in Poppius, who tells of a certain goldsmith who elicited gold from Vitriol. See, if you please, our Xistus, Chapter II, § 2, p. 14. It is not a wonder that the metallic aura sometimes mixes itself with the aura of minerals, not otherwise than as the aura of gold mixes itself with vines and grapes, and makes golden stones in the grapes. From this experiment it is not to be concluded immediately: Therefore it is the matter of the L. P. B. For it is not yet established by the faith of experience that gold, as gold, is the matter of the L. P. B. for the Adepts have their own peculiar gold. I will persist in examining the opinion of this most learned man; he says the oil of Vitriol must be infused into the fixed salt of Vitriol and then coagulated together. The spirit and oil of Vitriol have an essential identity, they differ only in color, this one is white and limpid; that one toward red, therefore it is whatever you smoke. Oil just as spirit are volatile in the fire, whatever is mixed here with fixed salt, from the mixture of both arises a monster which lacks all properties of the L. P. B.; this will be 1) fluxible, so that it flows like wax. 2) It may have entry into the marrow of the ignoble metal, it cleanses it from its leprosy. 3) It may bring a golden glowing color to quicksilver, fix it, and induce softness equivalent and homogeneous to gold to lead, tin, and silver, or make white silver from those metals. 4) One grain of the L. P. B. may tint some pounds of ignoble metal, who can promise these things to himself about this monster? 5) Fixed salt of Vitriol can acquire no metallic flux in the fire. 6) Fixed salt of Vitriol is an alkali, which in no third thing agrees with metals. 7) Oil of Vitriol is also entirely alien to the metallic nature and differs from metals as water from wine. 8) How will the oil of Vitriol be coagulated with the fixed Salt? if this happens, then by the benefit of Palingenesis a new progeny of Vitriol is made. 9) From where do they elicit this fixed salt? from colcothar; this salt has no use either in Alchemy or in Medicine, unless another handful is added.