The Instructed Beginner in Chemistry: A Hermetic Epistle

Therefore, I ask you to look at the sixth treatise of Sendivogius, inserted in the same New Light of his. There you will see it clearly, plainly, and visibly proven that all the works of the chemists who labor with mineral growths and metallic bodies are vain, futile, and of no value. For this reason, he says: instead of the seed, they take the bodies, not knowing that bodies are not begotten again from bodies, but are born only from the seed, and indeed from the living seed. All metals and all mineral growths of the third matter, which are already specified and dead, suffer from a lack of this seed. They are dry matters which completely lack the universal living spirit we seek. Without this living spirit, everyone admits that nothing can be accomplished in this art. Thus, not only do they take on the labor in vain without this universal spirit, but they also begin the work from the end in a foolish way, contrary to the opinion of all the Sages. But as for what the bodies and minerals of the Sages are, look for them according to Laurentius Ventura chapter 25.

or Paracelsus in his Alchemical Collections original: "Congeriis Chym." from the beginning of chapter 6 and the end of chapter 7. These are our two Sulfurs, namely the white and the red, which are contained in one Salt of Nature. These are also the true Fermentum leaven of the Stone, and the true mineral growths of the Sages, about which you can see Paracelsus in the place cited, chapter 8, etc.

Elsewhere, the Sages say, and not without reason, that the matter of the Stone comes from animals and plants, as we have shown above. However, they say it contains within it a mineral part, namely the sal centrale fixum animatum animated fixed central salt of a metallic nature. This salt can be melted, is incombustible, bitter, and fluid. Lullius and Geber speak clearly of this mineral part so defined in Volume 1 of Manget's Curious Library. Therefore, they have said of their Stone that it is vegetable, animal, and mineral: triple in name, but simple in essence, as one reads in the Rosary original: "Rosar.", referring to the Rosarium Philosophorum, etc. Regarding this matter adorned with a triple name, and why it is called so,