The Instructed Beginner in Chemistry: A Hermetic Epistle

union is that three-day work of the prophecy of Mary refers to Mary the Prophetess, an early alchemist, as Isaac explains there. Because a true Fermentum leaven or ferment is the Sulphur Sulfur or our gold, as Paracelsus confirms in his cited Alchemical Collections chapter 8. See also Ripley in his ninth gate, also Denis Zachaire original: "Dyon. Zaccarium" part 2 of his work, etc. The aforementioned unification or specification happens for 3 days in the open fire in the crucible, as Avicenna chapter 8, Roger Bacon in his Mirror of Alchemy original: "speculo Alchem." chapter 7, and Isaac Hollandus in the place cited above, as well as chapter 85, teach, etc. This is a work of three days, where the simple ones are deceived, believing that in 3 days the whole work can be brought to an end. But I say, not even in 3 years, etc.

Therefore regarding the true matter of our Stone, Basil Valentine speaks in his Treatise on the Great Stone of the Ancients original: "Tract. de Magno Lapide Antiquor." in the preface before his 12 keys: and you shall know that this is nothing else than a fluid substance that has come forth from a heavenly origin, which is adorned with its dry earth,

namely the Central Salt, and this is the key of the art, etc. But in his Triumphal Chariot original: "Carru triumphali" he has deceived us, as all others have done with so many false recipes and experiments, by describing innumerable pranks to mislead the minds of the unwise. He did indeed ripen some parts of the unripe gold from antimony—as it is commonly found in it—through our Universal Mercury, and brought his particular a limited transmutation to an end, without which universal-acting [agent], all particulars praised by the chemists are false. But when one has the universal root, as Basil himself testifies above that he had it, then many particulars arise from it, as Basil himself and the others have done; therefore one has no branch except from the trunk of the tree, as one notices from these very words of Basil, where he speaks there: that not so much is permitted to antimony, and no one can do this either, except he who possesses the Philosopher's Stone. Therefore Sendivogius in his Treatise on Sulfur.