Fridrichstadt Leisure, or the Chemical Tantalus

violence prevails, corroding everything and dividing it into atoms, no differently than if two most cruel animals rage against each other for so long, and do not rest until they have torn each other to pieces, devoured each other, and these two have been converted into one substance. This violent cruelty, however, between these two ingredients of the L. P. composition is nothing but a certain friendly friendship, desired concord, and the communication of their own intrinsic properties to one another, and a certain magnetic attraction to one another. Dry, thirsty vegetables do not imbibe the May dew with a greater appetite than the philosophical water exercises this leonine cruelty upon the earth, and the earth upon the water. To the philosophical earth, however, this slaughter is much more pleasant than nectar, and by tearing its marrow it receives significant strength in the earth, since with water it has an entirely and absolutely hermaphroditic nature.

§. 10. This sacred work warns the student of Chrysopoeia to choose the material for composing the L. P. which prides itself on this inscription: I am the treasury of the miracles and benefits of God. Indeed, this material renders all philosophers and all Physicians who contemplate it astonished, and although they see, yet it is not given to them to know what it hides within itself to the marrow. Physicians use both subjects for Medicine, and they also prepare medicines worthy of great praise from them, with which they not rarely restore health to the sick; but since they do not understand the true anatomy of these bodies, through which their own properties are communicated to one another, and through which from two one is made, and to convert both into the most fluid, most penetrating salt, they are content with the bark and attain only the surface. And it is compared with them as is read in the fable of Aesop, that a Stork once invited a Fox to dinner, proposing to him a vessel with a long and very high neck, inviting the fox to eat; but when he could not reach into the vessel and into the neck of the vessel with his mouth, the stork inserting his beak devoured it alone. And thus these two subjects are handed into the hands of Physicians, but, since they are destitute of experience as to how the analysis is to be instituted, they obtain nothing, and contrary to the received method, reduced into the form of art, it being a religion for them to know, they live content with an empty nut. Secondly, these two pride themselves on this inscription: do not touch me, unless the hand is expert, for indeed, if they are touched, and these two are joined, they receive those who touch them with sarcasm, and if they feel the power of Vulcan, they flee, leaving behind them no hope of any gain. Thirdly, the material