The Instructed Beginner in Chemistry: A Hermetic Epistle

An ornate decorative initial letter W marks the beginning of the discourse.
Therefore, if we wish to look deeply into the meaning and secrets of the Sages, it is necessary to pay close attention, to connect everything together, to investigate diligently, and to impress it firmly upon the memory. As Bernhardus Bernard of Trevisan, a famous 15th-century alchemist says: where the Philosophers original: "Weltweise", meaning those wise in the ways of the world or nature agree, there alone is the truth. But where they do not agree, there is without doubt untruth, and they deceive us with flattering words. Therefore, there is always only a single materia matter, one work, one Stone the Philosophers' Stone, one single government, and one single straight path, as all those who have attained the art agree. And that in which all Sages agree in practice is this: namely, to unite the dry with the moist. This means to unite the volatile spirit with the dry and firm body. Indeed, both must come from the same root and from universal nature. This is well explained by that upright anonymous author in his single discourse on the Turba The Assembly of the Philosophers, one of the oldest Latin alchemical texts, which is found immediately after the Turba Philosophorum. I advise reading this diligently, as I also

at the same time ask Your Excellency to attentively read through the anonymous French author in Volume 6 of the Theatrum Chemicum Chemical Theater, a massive compendium of alchemical writings around page 162. Its title is: An Instruction sent from a Father to his Son regarding the Solar Tree original: "de Arbore Solari", etc. I hope you will easily recognize your error there.

Therefore, our universal mercurial spirit the transformative, fluid principle in alchemy, which has been obtained through the mediation of our wine, is moist as Lullius Ramon Lull, a major figure in medieval alchemy says. Therefore, it is rightly called a burning water, the spirit of wine, and the water of life aqua vitae. This cannot be obtained henceforth without the philosophical, properly fermented wine. And a perfectly dry body is the salt, which is wisely extracted from the black tartar potassium bitartrate, the sediment from wine of that same wine with the help of fire. As Paracelsus Theophrastus Paracelsus, the famous Swiss physician and alchemist says in his collections, chapter 11, it must be purified in the best way and brought to the highest perfection. Then it is the perfect body of the Sages and the true ferment original: "Fermentum", a substance that triggers transformation of the Stone, as Guido Montanor an influential alchemical writer testifies in the prologue of his Ladder of the Philosophers original: "scalæ philosophorum". This tartar is called the