Fridrichstadt Leisure, or the Chemical Tantalus

This Nature-light kindles the light in the cineritious darkness, so that he may choose the shining, resplendent material that dazzles the eyes like the sun. Nature is also the companion. She calls out: pressing with your foot and insisting on my footsteps, follow me, your companion and partner, and beware of turning aside at the crossroads, and do not let the Sirens lead you away from the royal road, nor let the will-o'-the-wisp of frenetic philosophy seduce you.

§. 5. This divine labor ocularly shows that the utterance of Hermes Trismegistus is true, indeed most true: That which is above, the same is that which is below. Although the material ascending upward is water, nevertheless that earth, which remains at the bottom black and dark like an Ethiopian, fosters an intrinsic magnetism and almost deplores its separation from it and lets down drops with a light motion like tears, which the earth also imbibes no differently than a thirsty deer, and unites most tightly to itself; and it is not otherwise compared with these two apparently different things than with a bird, which flies upward from its eggs, but by the instinct of nature returns to its eggs; and thus that which ascends upward, by the instinct of nature or the archaeus formative force, returns to the homogeneous material. And such as is the homogeneous identity between the bird and its eggs, such is the consanguineous homogeneity between that which flies upward and that which remains at the bottom as silt.

§. 6. And thus this divine labor commands that no one should choose any other material than that which is homogeneous to the marrow, and which is absolutely and entirely devoid of all heterogeneity. The student of Chrysopoeia will pay the greatest attention to this property of the material. Let him choose such a subject for his work of the L. P. that is homogeneous according to its inner and outer context, or if not by Nature, let him make it so by art by cleaning and purging; which cleaning and purging consist in the removal of heterogeneous particles, which either Nature or the imposture of men mixes in. Beyond the Adepts, the writings of vulgar Chemists also teach the cleaning of either subject and the method of cleaning. And although they solicitously prescribe the purgation of those two subjects, yet they have their mind veiled by the fog of prejudices, so that although they labor intensely and with great study on the purgation of these subjects, yet they are ignorant of the sublime and mystical use of those two objects. Basilius Valentinus, that inhabitant of the Monastery, in his first Key teaches the purgation of one subject and demonstrates it through an image symbolically and sufficiently carefully. In short: the purgation of either subject is done by the benefit of salt, so that salt is the first in the work, and salt is the last in the finished work. Without salt, the Sun does not germinate; without salt, the Moon does not flow into sublunary things, and so sun and salt are the beginning, and are the consummation of the work.