ON THE TRUTH AND ANTIQUITY OF THE CHEMICAL ART.

CHAPTER ONE.

Decorative woodcut initial D featuring scrolling foliage and floral motifs.

But I will speak before you of a likeness, Esdras. How will you question the earth, and it will tell you: because it will give much earth, whence earthenware is made. But a small dust, whence gold is made.

See Arnal. p. 136.

The Most High created medicine from the earth, and a prudent man will not abhor it.

The words of the Lord are pure words: silver tried in a fire of earth, purified seven times.

The words of the Lord are pure words: silver tried in fire, proved three times, repurified seven times.

The words of the Lord are pure words: silver tried in a fire in an earthen vessel, purified seven times.

The words of God are pure words: silver burned in an aludel into earth or dust, refined seven times.

For this word Aludel is Arabic; to the Latins, it is a sublimatory, which that Arab Geber Abenhaen, or Ebenhaen, a chief philosopher among the chemical Arabs, Avicenna, Rhazes, Hali, Morienus, and many other Latins frequently use. Geber, lib. 2, c. 43. An Aludel, or Sublimatory, is a vessel in which chemical sublimation is performed: which is the elevation of a dry thing by fire with adhesion to its vessel. A dry thing, I say, that is, of the inferior elements, or matter. By fire, namely, gentle, equal, moist, containing, drying, digesting, and close to nature. Hermes Trismegistus, Sieve the thing Elevation, that is, conversion, or ennobling, and perfection. With adhesion to its vessel, that is, connatural, salty, and in which there is a stone-making virtue.