Theatrum chemicum, praecipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus de chemiae et lapidis philosophici antiquitate, veritate, iure, praestantia, & operationibus, continens: in gratiam verae chemiae, et medicinae chemicae studiosorum ... congestum, et in sex partes seu volumina digestum; singulis voluminibus, suo auctorum et librorum catalogo primis pagellis: rerum vero & verborum indice postremis annexo. Volumen primum [- sextum]

Vapor, Heraclitus said this is the soul of the metal.

kept as a seed of virtue, it will be able to generate something similar to itself, provided that matter of the same kind is applied to it, such a spirit which diligent physicists, separating by a certain sublimation by fire from gold, will apply to the cures of metals, and will make gold. Such a spirit indeed, from gold, or from another duly extracted and preserved, the Arab astrologers name Elixir.

ARISTOTLE in the book On the Secret of Secrets to King Alexander, chap. 65.

Aristotle calls it the metallic egg, and Pythagoras the bean.

First of all, O Alexander, I wish to hand over to you the greatest secret of secrets, and may divine power aid you in finishing the proposition, and in hiding the arcanum. Take therefore the animal, vegetable, and mineral stone, which is not a stone, nor has the nature of a stone: etc. Divide it therefore into four parts, and each part has one nature. Then compose it equally and proportionally, so that there may be no division or repugnance in it, and you will have the proposition, the Lord granting. Furthermore, the same author says, when you have had water from air, air from fire, and fire from earth, then you will have the mastery.

ALEXANDER the Emperor in a certain epistle.

Our old man is our dragon. This eats its head with its tail. And the head and the tail is the soul and the spirit, and the soul, and the spirit are created from mud, and this from the east and the west by the expeller of harms. I do not lie, because what I have said, I saw in Truth.

Geber book 3, chap. 79.

Now therefore let the sublime blessed and glorious God of natures be praised, who revealed to us the series of all medicines, with the experience of which, as much by the goodness of His instigation, as by the insistence of our labor, we have sought, and seen with the eye, and touched with the hand the complement of it, investigated by our mastery.

ALBERTUS surnamed Magnus, Bishop of the Church of Ratisbon, book On Minerals 3, chap. 1.

Concerning the transmutation of these metallic bodies, and the change of one into another, it is not for the physicist to determine, but for the art, which is Alchemical. Moreover, the best kind of this inquiry is the most certain, because then through the proper cause of each thing, the thing is known, and its accidents are in no way doubted, nor is it difficult to know.

VIRGIL, book 6 of the Aeneid.

Lead the black cattle, let those be the first offerings.

What the Golden Bough is.

Accept what must be done first, hidden in the dark tree
The Golden Bough, both in leaves and in flexible twig,